Job Title: Senior Backup Engineer – Cyber Resiliency & Cloud Automation Duration: 9+ months, (Potential Contract-to-Hire) Location: Chicago, IL - onsite 3 days per week| open to Tempe, AZ or other NT locations where a candidate could go into a local NT office
Position Summary We are seeking a highly technical Senior Backup Engineer to assist with designing, implementing, automating, and continuously improve enterprise backup, cyber recovery, and data protection platforms across hybrid cloud and on-premises environments along with a DTE (Dedicated Testing Environment). This role will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for modernizing backup infrastructure through Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, immutable air-gapped architectures, and recovery testing. The ideal candidate possesses deep expertise in enterprise backup technologies, cyber resiliency, cloud infrastructure, Terraform development, scripting, and large-scale recovery validation. They should be comfortable architecting secure solutions while driving automation and operational excellence within a highly regulated enterprise.
Experience Level: 3 - Senior
Required Qualifications: • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent experience. • 8+ years of enterprise backup engineering experience. • 5+ years designing enterprise backup architectures. • Experience supporting Fortune 500 or highly regulated environments. • Extensive experience with hybrid cloud infrastructure. • Strong understanding of cyber resiliency principles.
Required Technical Skills Backup Technologies Experience with one or more: • Cohesity • Dell PowerProtect Data Domain • Dell PowerProtect Data Manager • Dell Cyber Recovery Vault • Rubrik • Veeam • Commvault • Veritas NetBackup
Operating Systems Experience with: • Windows Server • Linux (RHEL preferred) • VMware ESXi
Preferred Qualifications • Experience designing enterprise cyber recovery architectures. • Knowledge of NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST SP 800-209, and ransomware recovery best practices. • Experience integrating backup platforms with SIEM, monitoring, and automation tools. • Familiarity with enterprise observability platforms such as Dynatrace or Splunk. • Experience with storage technologies including Dell PowerStore, PowerScale, NetApp, or Pure Storage. • Experience supporting financial services or other highly regulated industries. • Relevant certifications (AWS, Azure, VMware, HashiCorp Terraform, Cohesity, Dell Technologies, Veeam, or similar).
Leadership Competencies • Exceptional troubleshooting and analytical skills. • Strong automation-first mindset. • Ability to simplify complex technical problems. • Excellent written and verbal communication skills. • Collaborative leader capable of influencing cross-functional engineering teams. • Passion for continuous improvement and operational excellence. • Ability to mentor engineers while driving engineering standards and best practices.
Tasks & Responsibilities: Enterprise Backup & Recovery • Design, implement, administer, and optimize enterprise backup and recovery platforms across physical, virtual, cloud, and containerized workloads. • Lead the architecture and operational management of immutable and air-gapped backup environments to defend against ransomware and destructive cyber events. • Develop enterprise backup standards, engineering patterns, and operational procedures. • Perform capacity planning, lifecycle management, performance tuning, and storage optimization. • Ensure backup solutions consistently meet enterprise RTO, RPO, security, and compliance requirements.
Air-Gapped Cyber Recovery • Design and engineer logically and physically isolated cyber recovery environments. • Implement immutable backup strategies utilizing modern cyber vault technologies. • Validate secure backup replication into isolated environments. • Build automated processes for backup validation and malware-free recovery verification. • Partner with Cyber Security teams to support ransomware recovery strategies and cyber resilience initiatives.
Automation & Infrastructure as Code • Develop reusable Terraform modules for deploying backup infrastructure across cloud and on-prem environments. • Automate backup deployments using Infrastructure as Code principles. • Create automation utilizing: o PowerShell o Python o Bash o REST APIs • Build self-service deployment capabilities and standardized backup patterns. • Integrate automation into enterprise CI/CD pipelines.
Recovery Testing & Engineering • Build and maintain dedicated backup testing and validation environments. • Design automated recovery validation frameworks. • Lead enterprise recovery exercises including: o Backup restore validation o Bare metal recovery testing o Database recovery o File recovery o VM recovery o Cloud workload recovery o Cyber recovery scenario testing • Continuously improve testing automation to increase confidence in recoverability.
Support cloud-native backup strategies including immutable object storage and cloud disaster recovery. Engineering & Continuous Improvement • Build engineering standards and reusable automation frameworks. • Evaluate emerging backup and cyber recovery technologies. • Optimize backup performance and reduce operational complexity. • Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership. • Participate in architecture reviews and enterprise resiliency initiatives.
Applicant Notices & Disclaimers
For information on benefits, equal opportunity employment, and location-specific applicant notices, click here
At SPECTRAFORCE, we are committed to maintaining a workplace that ensures fair compensation and wage transparency in adherence with all applicable state and local laws.This position's pay range is $80.00/hr - $85.00/hr.
