Technical Infrastructure Lead Coordinator

This role focuses on working directly with engineering software development and QA teams to understand how VMware-based virtual machines are being used, what workloads they support, and the infrastructure those workloads require. The specialist will translate these findings into practical infrastructure placement recommendations, determining whether teams need dedicated hypervisor resources or can efficiently operate on a shared virtualization platform.

Unlike a hands-on system administrator role, this position emphasizes discovery, analysis, architecture guidance, and stakeholder engagement rather than day-to-day VM or platform management.

Key Responsibilities

Stakeholder Engagement & Discovery

• Meet with development and QA teams to understand:
  • Purpose and criticality of their VMware workloads
  • Performance, availability, and resiliency needs
  • Security, compliance, and isolation requirements
  • Current pain points with existing virtualization platforms
• Act as a technical liaison between infrastructure/platform teams and development teams
• Translate application requirements into infrastructure and virtualization recommendations

VMware Environment Assessment

• Inventory and assess existing VMware environments used by development teams, including:
  • VM sizing, resource utilization patterns, and growth projections
  • Dependency on VMware features (e.g., vMotion, DRS, snapshots)
  • Networking, storage, and backup integration requirements
• Identify patterns across teams to find opportunities for consolidation or standardization

Architecture & Placement Recommendations

• Analyze workload characteristics to determine the most suitable deployment model:
  • Dedicated hypervisor clusters for teams with strict isolation, performance, or compliance requirements
  • Shared internal hypervisor platforms for standard or burstable workloads
• Document clear criteria and decision frameworks for when dedicated environments are justified
• Provide guidance on right-sizing VM resources and avoiding over-provisioning

Collaboration & Documentation

• Work closely with platform, storage, network, and security teams to validate recommendations
• Document findings in clear, structured artifacts, including:
  • Workload summaries per team
  • Infrastructure recommendations and rationale
  • Risks, assumptions, and dependencies
• Present recommendations to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Advisory (Non-Operational) Responsibilities

• Offer best practices for VMware usage, capacity planning, and workload placement
• Identify opportunities for modernization or alignment with internal platform strategies (without owning execution)

Deliverables

• Per-team VMware workload assessment summaries
• Clear recommendations on dedicated vs. shared hypervisor placement
• Decision criteria documentation for future workload onboarding

Required Skills & Experience

• 5+ years in enterprise infrastructure or virtualization engineering
• Strong hands-on knowledge of VMware vSphere concepts (compute, storage, networking)
• Proven ability to assess workloads and translate requirements into architecture decisions
• Experience working directly with development or application teams in a consultative role
• Familiarity with shared vs. dedicated infrastructure models and their trade-offs
• Solid understanding of Linux and Windows server workloads (installation, tuning, operational characteristics)
• Working knowledge of enterprise storage and networking (e.g., SAN/NFS, VLANs, DNS, DHCP)
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to explain infrastructure decisions clearly

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Experience

• Exposure to additional virtualization or cloud platforms (KVM, OpenShift Virtualization, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Experience conducting infrastructure discovery or rationalization exercises
• Familiarity with capacity planning, cost modeling, or resource optimization
• Certifications such as VCP, RHCSA/RHCE, or cloud certifications