Principal Analyst, Disaster Recovery

 

Our mission is to create the Experience of a Lifetime for our employees, so they can, in turn, create the Experience of a Lifetime for our guests. We own and operate the most renowned destination resorts in the world as well as regional and local ski areas outside major cities, and connect them all through one unrivaled network. We are looking for ambitious leaders, innovators and creators to join our talented team. If you’re ready to pursue your fullest potential, we want to get to know you!

 

Candidates for year-round positions are reviewed on a rolling basis. Applications will be accepted up to 90 days after the posting date, or until the position is filled (whichever is first).

 

Job Summary:

As Principal Architect – Disaster Recovery, you will design and own the end‑to‑end recovery strategy that ensures rapid, reliable fail‑over of on‑premise infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. You’ll lead the migration of legacy virtualized workloads (VMware, Nutanix) to modern cloud‑native and container platforms, and architect an automated, continuously‑updated DR playbook that is embedded in our entire development lifecycle. Your expertise will help Vail Resorts keep guests safe, staff productive, and revenue streams resilient—no matter what the future holds.

 

Job Specifications:

• Starting Wage: $104,000 - $140,000 + annual bonus
• Employment Type: Year Round
• Shift Type: Full Time
• Minimum Age: At least 18 years of age
• Housing Availability: No

 

Job Responsibilities:

DR Strategy & Architecture     

• Define, document, and evolve a repeatable, Azure‑centric disaster‑recovery blueprint that maps every critical on‑prem service to its cloud counterpart.
• Design fail‑over pathways, recovery time objectives (RTOs), and recovery point objectives (RPOs) that align with business continuity requirements.

Virtualization Migration:          

• Own and execute VMware‑to‑Nutanix, VM‑to‑Container, and VMware/Nutanix‑to‑Cloud‑Native migrations.
• Implement “lift‑and‑shift” as well as re‑platforming strategies, guiding teams to move workloads to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Container Instances, or serverless where appropriate.

Criticality & Dependency Mapping:

• Conduct systematic assessments of system criticality, create dependency matrices, and identify fail‑over boundaries.
• Translate organizational risk profiles into concrete DR controls.

Business Continuity & Exercises:       

• Design, schedule, and run full‑scale DR drills across environments.
• Post‑exercise retrospectives, gap analyses, and corrective action plans.

Automation & Knowledge “Source of Truth”:

• Build a dynamic, version‑controlled recovery playbook using DevOps tooling (Git, Terraform, ARM/Blueprints, Azure Policy).
• Automate recovery orchestration with Azure Automation, Logic Apps, Azure Arc, and custom scripts.

Cross‑Functional Partnership:

• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture, DevOps, Security, Compliance, and Site‑Reliability teams to embed DR checks in CI/CD pipelines.
• Champion DR as a pillar of the development lifecycle and product delivery.

Thought Leadership & Continuous Improvement: