IT-Senior Systems Engineer

Ascend is the largest credit union in Middle Tennessee and one of the largest credit unions in the United States, with over $4 billion in assets. With an occupation-based field of membership, Ascend is focused on the expansion and diversification of the select employee groups it serves, which creates greater security for the credit union and its member-owners. Approximately 650 employees serve more than 260,000 members from 27 Middle Tennessee branch locations, Regional Operations Center, Teller Center and Corporate Headquarters. Ascend recognizes that its employees are critical to the credit union’s sustained success and future growth. Our employees are the face of the credit union and their personal successes fuel the success of the team. Through collaboration between employees, management, our membership and our Board, we fuel an engine that propels the credit union forward.

Thank you for your interest in a career with Ascend Federal Credit Union! Being employed by Ascend is vastly different than just holding a job. The credit union prides itself on providing employees rewarding career opportunities, competitive benefits and a unique work culture. The credit union’s commitment to its employees is fostered by its commitment to the member-owners, ensuring dedicated and engaged employees to serve the membership. Ascend’s vision to be the most loved credit union in our market by employees and members alike has earned the credit union distinctions including Federal Credit Union of the Year (NAFCU, 2015), Best Credit Union to Work For (2016-2022) and Training APEX Awards (2015-2023).

Primary responsibilities include an advanced level of implementing, securing, maintaining, and monitoring the health of the server environment throughout the enterprise, which encompasses assisting with the architectural design of complex technical solutions, conducting utilization studies and the establishment of fault notification processes, analyzing data to recognize trends, and creating automated proactive measures to prevent application downtime. Provides Tier 3 support of servers, storage, and infrastructure services. Mentors members of the IT Operations team. This position will work closely with other Ascend Information Technology team members to support the overall mission of the company and its long-term strategic business initiatives.

• Provide advanced support for servers, storage systems, and infrastructure services. This individual may lead and direct the work of others on occasion to accomplish the common goals of the IT Operations team. This individual also participates in the planning and implementing policies and procedures to ensure system provisioning and maintenance are consistent with company goals, industry best practices, and regulatory requirements.
• Assist with implementing new technologies and verify that all procedural documentation is accurate and that knowledge transfer from the vendor to the engineering team is completed before any technology is placed in the production environment.
• Assist with architecture reviews and document the design of each technology used by the credit union. Regularly review and update as-built documentation as needed.
• Act as a technical lead for enterprise-level strategic projects, meeting milestone deadlines and accomplishing project action items.
• Ensure that proper operating procedures are followed during the full lifecycle of all servers, storage, and hyper-converged systems throughout the enterprise, including documentation, implementation, maintenance, monitoring, support, refresh/upgrades, and decommission. Maintain and update asset inventory/CMDB to ensure all data is accurate.
• Serve as level 3 support of core infrastructure services utilizing the incident management ticketing system. Core services include Active Directory, Group Policy, Exchange, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, Netscaler, VMware, SCCM, DNS, DHCP, DFS, Certificate Authorities, Hyper-converged hardware, Office 365, and Azure/AWS.
• Required to administer data within corporate change management, problem management, and request systems; monitor assignment and completion of efforts documented in these systems; and properly escalate issues to management. This role may serve as a point of contact for interactions with vendors for issue remediation and root cause analysis.
• Installs various types of software, including operating systems and applications, on various hardware platforms, including system updates, patches, and configuration changes. Operating systems include Windows Server 2016/2019/2022 and ESXi 7.x, and ESXi 8.x.
• Install server hardware and maintain system racks, ensuring a visually clean and consistent environment. With installation and maintenance comes the need to maintain the asset inventory, including servers and software licenses. Hardware includes EMC VxRails, EMC/Dell servers, EMC storage, and Rubrik backup appliances.
• Analyze data from monitoring systems to recognize trends and create proactive solutions to prevent recurring issues. Monitoring solutions include LogicMonitor, Manage Engine, Watchdog, and notices from MSSP.
• Assist application teams with the assessment of new technologies, application upgrades, and general technical support.
• Facilitate training, coaching, and mentoring junior team members to promote their skills development.
• Read all internal publications, including HUB and Possibilities.
• Perform other duties as required or assigned.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree Four year degree in Information Technology / Computer Science or equivalent technical training is required

Work Experience

• 5-8 years Experience in information technology supporting servers and/or storage solutions is required
• 5-8 years Experience installing and maintaining Intel servers is required
• 5-8 years Experience managing VMware and/or Citrix environment is required
• 3-5 years Experience Dell and HP server platforms, hyper-converged solutions including EMC VxRail, Nutanix, or Cisco HyperFlex is required
• 3-5 years Extensive experience with securing a Microsoft server environment, including Server 2008/2012/2016, Active Directory group policies, Exchange, SCCM, Distributed File Services, O365, PKI, DNS, DHCP, IIS, etc is required
• 3-5 years Experience with Enterprise monitoring solutions is required
• 1-3 years Experience working in Azure, AWS or Google Cloud is required
• 1-3 years Project management experience as a technical lead or contributor on projects is required
• 1-3 years Experience with public Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud is required

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Broad knowledge of Powershell scripting and automation.
• Extensive knowledge supporting and administering enterprise applications such as VMware vCenter, ESXi, Orchestrator, VDI solutions such as Citrix XenDesktop or VMware Horizons, Exchange services, Rubrik backups, and Citrix Netscalers.
• Working knowledge and experience with ITIL foundation processes.
• Must be able to manage multiple projects/tasks concurrently; prioritize requests and complete assignments within an estimated timeframe; and organize, schedule, and coordinate a variety of activities and projects.
• Extensive knowledge of highly available technical solutions across multiple data centers and the cloud.
• Expert at troubleshooting complex problems.
• Broad knowledge of storage solutions, including SAN, NAS, CIFs, NFS, iSCSI, replication, and deduplication.
• Must be able to learn new software and hardware packages and adapt to technological changes.
• Must be a self-starter and be able to use own judgment to undertake activities with minimal supervision. Must work independently and as a team member.
• Must be able to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with all those contacted during the course of work.
• Must be able to carry lift and carry boxes containing computer components, printer paper, etc.
• Hours may be unpredictable because of unforeseen problems arising, updates, etc.
• Regular and reliable attendance is required.
• Possession of a valid, unrestricted driver's license.
• Must be able to operate or have the ability to be trained to operate related office equipment, including computer room equipment, multifunction copier, and VOIP telephone.

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