At Wilson Elser, we are redefining what it means to work at a national law firm. With more than 1,400 attorneys across 46 offices nationwide, we are recognized among the top 100 law firms by The American Lawyer and ranked #30 in the National Law Journal’s survey of the nation’s largest law firms.
Our continued success is built on a culture of collaboration, innovation, client service, and mutual respect. We are committed to fostering an environment where employees are empowered to grow their careers, contribute meaningfully, and thrive professionally.
The Position
The Sr. Infrastructure Operations Engineer will work as part of a dynamic team to provide high quality engineering, implementation, and support across all areas of the Windows platform, virtualization, storage, SQL Server, and cloud infrastructure — both on premises and in Azure.
This role serves as the senior technical escalation point for the Infrastructure Operations team: the engineer other engineers turn to when an incident exceeds the team’s depth, and the person accountable for the design, resilience, and documented recoverability of the firm’s virtualization, storage, SQL, and cloud platforms. This role provides expert guidance during complex incidents that exceed the team's standard support capabilities.
This role is also the firm’s designated Operations SQL SME, as defined in the SQL Responsibilities Rider to the Infrastructure Operating Model Charter and provides technical leadership for SQL Server operational support, availability, performance, maintenance, and recovery.
This individual must be a great communicator, work well within a team, and be a self-starter able to own and independently lead projects from planning through completion.
Critically, this individual is to strengthen the overall capability of the Infrastructure Operations team by eliminating single points of failure. This includes creating and maintaining high-quality operational documentation, developing repeatable procedures that other engineers can confidently execute, and actively cross-training teammates. The objective is to build a resilient, knowledge-sharing organization where critical expertise is institutionalized rather than dependent on any one individual. Deep expertise held privately by one person is expressly not the goal of this role.
Key Responsibilities:
- Primary owner — Azure: administer, and support the firm’s Azure estate, including Landing Zone, IaaS/PaaS, Entra ID / AAD Connect synchronization, SSO, Conditional Access, and MFA; lead workload migrations from on-premises to Azure.
Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server (2014 through 2022) — required. Must be able to plan and execute SQL version upgrades and failover-cluster node-evict/rebuild procedures, and to distinguish platform-owned SQL work from application-owned SQL work.
- Primary owner and designated SME — SQL Server platform: own the SQL Server platform end to end as defined in the SQL Responsibilities Rider — installation, patching, and version/edition upgrades; Always On Availability Groups, failover clustering, and DR runbooks; backups, restores, and validated recovery testing; Serve as first-touch triage for all SQL tickets entering the Operations queue and route application-owned SQL work to the appropriate application team.
- Primary owner — VMware and VMware SRM: administer vSphere/vCenter across multiple sites; own DR replication and recovery plans in Site Recovery Manager, including scheduled failover testing and validated recovery documentation.
- Primary owner — Storage: administer Pure Storage and HPE 3PAR arrays — provisioning, capacity and performance management, firmware lifecycle, and replication.
- Primary owner — Dell server hardware: Dell OpenManage and Dell blade chassis — firmware lifecycle, hardware fault remediation, and vendor RMA coordination.
- Primary owner — Monitoring: SolarWinds — node coverage accuracy, alert tuning, and reduction of alert noise so that alerts are trusted and actioned.
- Primary owner — Enterprise application certificates: full lifecycle management, a maintained renewal calendar, and prevention of expiry-driven outages.
- Secondary owner: Active Directory and Exchange On-Premises - (on-premises), providing depth behind the existing primary owners.
- Escalation point: serve as the senior technical escalation for the Infrastructure Operations team; take ownership of major incidents, drive root cause to closure, and publish a written RCA.
- Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft-driven server OS technologies Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022, including in-place upgrades and failover-cluster methodologies (a Windows Server 2012 end-of-life refresh, including 14 SQL cluster nodes, is currently in flight).
- Hands-on experience with Azure, PaaS, IaaS, and workload migrations to Azure — required.
- Administration experience of the Virtualization (Azure and on-prem VMware) environment across multiple sites — required. HyperV experience a plus.
- Strong hands-on experience with Active Directory (Group Policies, ACL management, etc.), PowerShell scripting.
- Strong hands-on experience with Office 365; EOL as well as Exchange on-prem with experience implementing and migrating to Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive.
- 1Password, Barracuda, Atlassian Jira project and issue management for daily work, LanSweeper, Dell hardware, OpenManage Enterprise, Intune, Pure Storage, SolarWinds, Varonis, Veeam experience a plus.
Qualifications
- Broad hands-on knowledge of Server Infrastructure and Cloud technologies and other industry-standard techniques and best practices.
- Knowledge of applicable practices and laws relating to data privacy and protection.
- Ability to conduct research into new technologies and products as required.
- High level of analytical and problem-solving abilities.
- Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.
- Highly self-motivated and directed.
- Solid project management skills.
- Excellent listening skills.
- Ability to work within a team-oriented, collaborative environment and independently when applicable.
- Strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communications skills.
- Strategic and creative thinking.
- Strong documentation required and Visio diagram experience a plus.
- Communicate with management, peers, and office administrators, and demonstrate strong customer service skills.
- This position is dedicated to the infrastructure team to perform all activities associated with managing, supporting, and troubleshooting in a large, complex, and widely distributed environment.
- Participate in a weekly on-call rotation that begins at 8AM Mondays and rotates with the team every 4-5 weeks
- College or University degree in a related field or 10+ years equivalent work experience.
- Certifications in ITIL, Agile, and/or other technical acumen (Microsoft, Azure, O365) a plus.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience; a minimum of 7 years of hands-on infrastructure engineering experience, including at least 3 years in a senior or escalation capacity.
- Broad hands-on knowledge of server infrastructure, SQL Server, and cloud technologies, and other industry-standard techniques and best practices.
- Demonstrated ability to act as a final technical escalation point — calm, methodical, and decisive under major-incident pressure.
- Ability to produce documentation another engineer can execute without assistance — this is a primary measure of success in this role.
- Relevant certifications preferred: Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104) or Azure Solutions Architect (AZ-305); Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300) or equivalent SQL Server credential; VMware VCP-DCV; ITIL Foundation.
Why Should You Apply?
- Benefits: Outstanding benefits package, including 401k match and generous PTO plan
- Career Growth: Ample opportunities for professional development and advancement
- Employee Perks: Access to corporate discount plans and other benefits
Wilson Elser welcomes submissions of candidates for our open positions exclusively from recruitment agencies with an active, signed fee agreement who have been granted access to a position through our dedicated Recruitment Agency Portal. We are unable to consider submissions from recruitment agencies without a current (dated as of 7/1/2024) agreement in place. We appreciate your understanding. For collaboration inquiries or to establish an agreement, please contact us at talentacquisition@wilsonelser.com.
Wilson Elser is committed to a collegial work environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. It is the Firm's policy that employment will be based on merit, qualifications, and competence. Further, employment decisions will be made without regard to an applicants race, color, age, sex, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation or preference, gender identity, physical or mental disability, status as a victim of domestic violence, sex offenses, or stalking, past or present service in the uniformed services or application or obligation to serve in the uniformed services, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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