Senior System Engineer

Senior Systems Engineer, Azure and AI (Contract to Hire)

An enterprise organization is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to support and enhance its hybrid infrastructure with a focus on Microsoft Azure and AI workload readiness. This role is responsible for advanced administration, security, automation, and monitoring of an enterprise Windows server environment. You will provide tier 2 and tier 3 support, contribute to infrastructure standards, and partner with cross-functional teams to support business-critical applications.

This is a contract-to-hire position with a hybrid schedule.

Hybrid:
Remote Monday and Friday, onsite Tuesday through Thursday

Required to reside in one of the following locations to be considered:

• Lewisville, TX
• St. Louis, MO (Chesterfield area)
• Rogers, AR

• Contract (W2 hourly): $50 to $60 per hour
• Target converted salary range: $120,000 to $130,000 (if converted to full-time)

• Administer and maintain enterprise Windows server environments, including backups and recoverability
• Support and maintain Active Directory services and related Microsoft server technologies (Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, and Exchange)
• Provide tier 2 and tier 3 escalation support for server and infrastructure issues, including incident response and root cause analysis
• Implement automation to improve reliability and reduce manual work (Power Shell and other infrastructure automation tools)
• Support Azure and Microsoft 365 environments, including Azure AD
• Build and maintain infrastructure readiness for AI workloads in hybrid environments, including computing and storage requirements
• Enable monitoring and proactive operations using automation and AI-enhanced monitoring tools
• Support deployment processes for AI and infrastructure components, including containerization and CI/CD, where applicable
• Develop or maintain Python-based automation and infrastructure tooling to support scalable operations
• Collaborate with developers, data-focused teams, and infrastructure stakeholders to support deployments and troubleshoot performance issues
• Document system architecture, procedures, and operational standards that contribute to changing control processes
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to operational best practices

• High School Diploma or GED
• 7 or more years of IT experience in a Level 3 support role or higher
• Strong experience with Microsoft Azure, Azure AD, and Microsoft 365
• Advanced experience administering Microsoft server platforms and core services (Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, and Exchange)
• Strong networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, VPN, LAN/WAN) and troubleshooting capability
• Proficiency with Python
• Experience with infrastructure automation tools (Power Shell and one or more of Ansible, Terraform, or similar)
• Hardware troubleshooting experience in enterprise environments (server and network hardware such as Dell, HP, Cisco)
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents)

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent related work experience
• Training or foundational knowledge in AI and ML concepts or AI-enhanced IT operations (for example, Microsoft AI-900 or equivalent)
• Familiarity with AI-enhanced monitoring and security tools (Dynatrace, Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or similar)
• Exposure to AI infrastructure platforms (Azure ML, NVIDIA AI Enterprise, VMware Private AI, or similar)
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD practices

• Occasional after-hours availability (nights or weekends) for incident response, upgrades, or maintenance windows
• Occasional travel may be required to support distributed teams and initiatives

If you are interested, share a resume highlighting enterprise Windows server administration, Azure, and Microsoft 365 experience, automation depth, and any AI workload enablement or monitoring work.