Senior IT Systems Engineer

Summary

Join ExtraHop's IT team as a Senior IT Systems Engineer and play a key role in building and supporting our hybrid and cloud-native environments. You will design scalable infrastructure, solve operational challenges, and enable team success by owning and enhancing core systems and services. This position requires applying strategic thinking and hands-on expertise to system design, incident response, automation, and platform optimization. You will help set standards for reliability, security, and operational efficiency while mentoring peers and fostering a collaborative culture. The role involves ensuring the availability and performance of critical infrastructure, designing resilient solutions, developing automation tools, and serving as a technical point of contact for stakeholders. You will also contribute to documentation, knowledge sharing, security compliance, and cross-functional collaboration.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in Linux, Unix, and/or Windows systems engineering or administration
• Strong scripting skills with Shell (Bash) and Python; experience automating routine tasks
• Proven experience working with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and hybrid infrastructures
• Familiarity with monitoring tools and logging frameworks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)
• Solid understanding of networking and application protocols: TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, SSH, TLS
• Experience with virtualization and containerization technologies (e.g., KVM, Docker)
• Experience with configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, or Chef)
• Comfort with distributed version control (e.g. Git) and collaborative workflows
• Strong problem-solving, troubleshooting, and decision-making skills

Responsibilities

• System Engineering & Reliability: Ensure availability and performance of critical infrastructure and services through well-designed systems, active monitoring and response, and participation in an on-call rotation
• Architecture & Design: Design and implement resilient, scalable hybrid/multi-cloud solutions, with a focus on automation, security, and long-term maintainability
• Automation & Scripting: Develop and maintain automation tools and scripts to streamline system operations and reduce manual overhead—primarily using Shell and Python
• Stakeholder & Executive Management: Serve as a technical touch point for stakeholders and executives as needed, maintaining the right level of depth for the given conversation to bring them along
• Documentation & Knowledge Sharing: Create and maintain technical documentation, design diagrams, and runbooks. Support knowledge transfer and cross-training within the team
• Security & Compliance: Apply a security-first mindset to system administration tasks. Assist in enforcing access controls, auditing, and patching
• Mentorship & Collaboration: Support junior engineers through coaching and peer review. Act as a technical resource to cross-functional partners and contribute to architectural discussions

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD tools
• Knowledge of secondary protocols (UDP, SNMP, SMTP, NTP)
• Experience with firewalls, VPNs, and security appliance configuration
• Familiarity with ExtraHop products or similar observability tools
• Contribution to internal tools or in-house IT automation systems

Benefits

• Health, Dental, and Vision Benefits
• Flexible PTO, Sick Time Prorated Based on Date of Hire, and All Federal Holidays (US Only) + 3 Days of Paid Volunteer Time
• Non-Commissioned Positions may be eligible to participate in the Annual Discretionary Bonus Plan
• FSA and Dependent Care Accounts + EAP, where applicable
• Educational Reimbursement
• 401k with Employer Match or Pension where applicable
• Pet Insurance (US Only)
• Parental Leave (US Only)
• Hybrid and Remote Work Model