Principal Systems Engineer

Pay: $140,000

Role
Who this person is and what they own
The Principal Systems Engineer is the technical backbone of the organization's IT infrastructure. This individual designs, implements, and sustains the systems, networks, and platforms that every team depends on translating business needs into reliable, secure, and scalable technology solutions.

Position in Org
Reports to IT Manager or Director of Infrastructure. Works cross-functionally with other departments and business units.

Scope
Owns system lifecycle from architecture and deployment through monitoring, optimization, and decommissioning.

Authority
Makes decisions on system configurations, technology stack choices, and incident response within defined guardrails.

Responsibilities
What this person does day-to-day

• Design & Architecture
  Design scalable IT systems, servers, networks, storage, virtualization aligned with organizational goals and security standards.
• Implementation
  Deploy and configure hardware, software, and cloud services. Ensure smooth rollouts with minimal disruption to operations.
• Monitoring & Maintenance
  Proactively monitor system health and performance. Apply patches, updates, and tuning to prevent issues before they escalate.
• Security & Compliance
  Integrate security best practices into all system designs. Ensure compliance with relevant policies, standards, and regulations.
• Incident Response
  Lead triage and resolution of system incidents. Conduct root cause analysis and document findings to prevent recurrence.
• Documentation
  Maintain accurate records of configurations, changes, runbooks, and system inventories for operational continuity.

Results
What success looks like measurable outcomes
Success in this role is defined by the reliability, efficiency, and security of systems under this engineer's stewardship.

• Uptime Target - 99.9% - System availability SLA
• Incident MTTR - < 1hrs - Mean time to resolve
• Change Success - 95%+ - Zero-defect deployments
• Patch Coverage - 100% - Critical patches within SLA

Qualitative Results Expected

• Systems scale predictably with business growth, no surprise capacity crunches
• Security vulnerabilities are identified and remediated before they become incidents
• Runbooks and documentation are maintained so another engineer can operate systems in the owner's absence
• Cross-functional teams trust IT infrastructure as an enabler, not a bottleneck
• System costs are actively optimized, license consolidation, right-sizing, and cloud efficiency

Requirements
What it takes to succeed in this role

EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field, or equivalent work experience
• 3–7 years of hands-on systems engineering or IT infrastructure experience
• Demonstrated experience designing and supporting enterprise-grade infrastructure environments

TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Windows Server / Linux
• VMware / Hyper-V
• AWS / Azure / GCP
• Active Directory
• TCP/IP Networking
• DNS / DHCP / VPN
• PowerShell / Bash
• Backup & DR
• ITSM / Ticketing
• Security Hardening
• Docker / Kubernetes

SOFT SKILLS & BEHAVIORS

• Root-cause thinking
• Clear communicator
• Works under pressure
• Self-directed learner
• Collaborative
• Detail-oriented
• Ownership mindset