SUMMARY Responsible for being the senior, hands-on engineer responsible for designing, implementing, and improving infrastructure services that support Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. at scale. This role leads technical workstreams, mentors junior engineers, and drives measurable improvements in reliability, security, and operational efficiency. The engineer strengthens the organization's security posture by defining secure standards, proactively reducing risk, and ensuring systems are resilient and auditable. Success requires deep troubleshooting ability, strong project leadership, and disciplined operational practices. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Lead infrastructure projects from design through implementation, including scope definition, risk assessment, stakeholder updates, and post-implementation validation. Serve as a primary escalation point for complex incidents; coordinate cross-team troubleshooting and drive root cause analysis and permanent fixes. Design and maintain secure configuration baselines for servers and core services; validate compliance and remediate drift. Own patching and lifecycle strategies for assigned platforms, including prioritization based on vulnerability severity and business impact. Develop system-specific operational policies and runbooks; ensure procedures are clear, tested, and adopted by the team. Mentor and coach Systems Engineer I–II staff through pairing, reviews, and skills development plans; provide feedback on execution quality. Implement automation to reduce manual work (provisioning, reporting, health checks, maintenance tasks) and improve consistency. Plan and execute backup and disaster recovery strategies for assigned services; lead resiliency testing and track remediation to closure. Partner with Security to respond to audits, vulnerability assessments, and control reviews; provide evidence and implement corrective actions. Evaluate and recommend infrastructure tools and services; perform technical validation, proof-of-concept work, and implementation planning. Collaborate with Network, Cloud, Application, and Service Desk teams to ensure end-to-end service reliability and secure integration patterns. Produce clear technical documentation, architecture diagrams, and decision records to support operations and knowledge transfer. QUALIFICATIONS EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent experience). Five (5) or more years of systems engineering, infrastructure operations, or a closely related role Demonstrated experience leading technical initiatives and mentoring junior team members. Experience with cloud hybrid architectures and identity integrations. Experience with compliance frameworks and audit evidence collection in regulated environments. Advanced experience with Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, or related platform technologies. Experience designing hybrid connectivity, identity integration, observability, backup, recovery, or platform security patterns. Experience in insurance, financial services, regulated environments, or complex enterprise technology organizations. Role-aligned certifications (Microsoft, VMware, Linux, cloud provider, or security-focused credentials). SKILLS Strong administration and engineering experience in Windows Server and/or Linux, including performance tuning and advanced troubleshooting. Proven ability to design and implement infrastructure services (identity components, management tools, monitoring, endpoint or server management platforms). Competence with infrastructure automation (PowerShell, Bash, and/or configuration tools) with a focus on repeatability and auditability. Strong understanding of security fundamentals for infrastructure: hardening, secure authentication, logging, vulnerability remediation, and privileged access controls. Experience leading projects and coordinating stakeholders; able to translate technical tradeoffs into business impacts. Excellent documentation skills: can produce runbooks and diagrams that others can reliably follow. Ability to define operational metrics and improve them (availability, incident volume, time to recovery, patch compliance).