System Administrator – Backup & Recovery

About the Position

System Administrator – Backup & Recovery

We are looking for a hands-on Systems Administrator specializing in Backup & Recovery to take full ownership of a complex, multi-tenant backup environment. You will be responsible for the health, performance, security, and capacity of backups across our private VMware cloud, AWS infrastructure, remote DR sites, and Microsoft 365 tenants.

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Responsibilities

• Ensuring the 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule is maintained and enforced across all platforms and clients
• Proactive monitoring and troubleshooting of backup jobs across a high-density environment including virtual machines and MS SQL servers
• Performing and validating restore operations: full VM, instant recovery, item-level, SQL point-in-time, Kubernetes workloads
• Conducting regular recovery drills and maintaining RPO/RTO compliance per client SLA
• Repository capacity planning: sizing, growth forecasting, and expansion decisions across local, remote, and cloud tiers
• Managing backup infrastructure lifecycle: version updates, scaling, storage provisioning, configuration changes
• Managing remote repository sites: monitoring hardware health, coordinating maintenance, tracking disk capacity and lifecycle
• Planning and owning the rollout of Microsoft 365 backup across client tenants
• Acting as the final point of authority for all backup-related technical decisions
• Maintaining up-to-date runbooks, architecture documentation, and change logs

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Requirements

Must-have technical skills

• Veeam Backup & Replication

  • 3+ years hands-on in production environments with 200+ protected objects
  • Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR): configuration, performance/capacity/archive tiering, offload policies
  • Proxy server management: placement, transport mode selection (Direct SAN, Hot-Add, NBD), concurrent task tuning
  • Multi-site backup copy jobs and replication over WAN: seeding, bandwidth throttling, health checks
  • Windows repositories with ReFS (block cloning, fast synthetic fulls)
  • Linux hardened repositories with XFS (immutability, ransomware protection)
  • AWS S3 as SOBR capacity/archive tier; S3 Object Lock
  • Veeam Backup for AWS (EC2, RDS, and native AWS workloads)
  • Veeam Data Cloud: configuration and integration as an offsite/cloud backup target
  • PowerShell / Bash scripting for backup automation (basic to intermediate level acceptable)

• VMware / vSphere

  • Understanding of VADP and how Veeam integrates with vSphere transport modes (Hot-Add, Direct Storage Access, NBD)
  • vApps: backup and restore of multi-VM application containers
  • Changed Block Tracking (CBT): how it works, what breaks it, how to reset and rescan
  • VM snapshot behavior and performance implications during backup
  • Storage vMotion impact on backup jobs

• Windows Server

  • Disk and storage management, ReFS filesystem
  • Windows backup agents, services management

• Linux Server

  • CLI proficiency, XFS and LVM management
  • Veeam Linux agent, hardened repository configuration

• MS SQL Server backup

  • VSS-aware image-level backup and application-aware processing
  • Transaction log backup, log chain management, truncation options and risks
  • AlwaysOn Availability Groups: replica targeting, backup preference configuration, VSS behavior across replicas
  • Backup strategy for high write-load databases (snapshot growth, VSS timeout mitigation)

• Public Cloud - AWS

  • Hands-on experience protecting AWS resources: EC2 instances using Veeam Backup for AWS
  • Understanding of AWS RDS backup: Veeam for AWS where applicable, native AWS backup tools where not
  • Familiarity with AWS S3 storage classes (Standard, IA, Glacier) in the context of backup tiering

• Microsoft 365

  • Understanding of backup approaches for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Teams, and Power BI
  • Familiarity with at least one M365 backup solution (Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 or equivalent)

• Storage - general literacy

  • Understanding of storage hardware fundamentals: disk types (HDD, SSD, NVMe), RAID levels, capacity planning
  • Capable of selecting and sizing a new storage system for backup repositories and understanding integration with existing infrastructure (currently Dell-based)
  • Note: day-to-day storage administration is handled by a dedicated infrastructure team; this role requires decision-making literacy, not full storage administration

• Networking basics

  • Solid understanding of networking as it relates to backup traffic: ports, protocols, dedicated management/backup network segments
  • WAN replication, bandwidth scheduling, firewall rules for backup traffic flows

Nice-to-have

• Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) certification
• Veeam ONE (monitoring and reporting)
• Veeam Service Provider Console (VSPC)
• VMware vCloud Director
• Dell/HPE Storage Systems - hands-on familiarity
• Kubernetes backup experience - Kasten K10 or similar (we operate Kubernetes clusters and use Kasten)
• Ransomware-resilient backup architecture: 3-2-1-1-0 rule, immutable storage design, air-gapped copies

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Personal attributes

• Ownership mentality - comfortable being the final decision-maker in their domain
• Methodical troubleshooter: resolves root causes, not just symptoms
• Proactive operator: catches problems through monitoring before they breach SLAs
• Strong drive to learn and expand expertise - more important than years of experience
• Strong documentation discipline - runbooks, diagrams, and change logs kept current as part of the workflow
• Calm and structured under pressure during production incidents
• Clear communicator with clients and cross-functional team members
• Comfortable managing backup for multiple clients simultaneously with different SLAs