Senior System Engineer

Our client, a professional services firm in the Pacific Northwest, is looking for a Senior Systems Engineer. This is a contract engagement covering a broad infrastructure scope, with the potential to convert to a full-time role for the right candidate.

Location: Seattle, WA – Hybrid (2–3 days on-site per week)

Duration: 4+ months contract-to-hire

Compensation: $60.00 – $75.00 per hour

Benefits: Benefits available to eligible employees or consultants may include medical, dental, and vision insurance, paid sick leave, retirement savings plans, and other employer sponsored programs.

• US citizens and those authorized to work in the US are encouraged to apply.*
• Work sponsorship is not currently available.*

Summary

Our client is seeking a senior, hands-on systems engineer to step into a critical infrastructure role spanning identity, PKI, cloud, and Windows server environments. The ideal candidate is comfortable owning business-critical systems from design through day-to-day operations, inheriting lightly documented environments, and tracing dependencies across multiple technical domains. This person will serve as a senior technical resource and escalation point while also contributing to documentation, automation, and long-term modernization efforts.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer and support on-premises Active Directory, including forest and domain management, DNS, replication, FSMO roles, sites and site links, trust relationships, and authentication services.
• Manage hybrid identity through Azure AD/Entra ID and Azure AD Connect, including Conditional Access policies, enterprise application registrations, Privileged Identity Management, and RBAC.
• Serve as the subject matter expert for enterprise PKI and certificate services, including the full certificate lifecycle — issuance, renewal, revocation, expiration monitoring, and template management — as well as CRL, OCSP, AIA, and CDP administration.
• Administer production AWS workloads including EC2, EBS, FSx, AWS Backup, and Patch Manager; support Windows-based enterprise applications in AWS; and contribute to disaster recovery planning, runbook development, and recovery testing.
• Administer, patch, and troubleshoot Windows Server environments and IIS-hosted websites, web services, and APIs, including application pools, TLS bindings, and certificate stores.
• Administer Microsoft 365 services including Exchange Online and Teams; manage email security standards including DKIM, DMARC, and SPF.
• Serve as the senior Tier 3 escalation point for complex incidents involving identity, certificates, Windows Server, AWS, IIS, and enterprise applications.
• Develop and maintain production-quality PowerShell scripts for infrastructure administration, reporting, remediation, and operational workflows; apply infrastructure-as-code practices where practical.
• Produce high-quality technical documentation — architecture diagrams, runbooks, standard operating procedures, dependency maps, and recovery procedures — and maintain documentation as systems evolve.
• Partner with Information Security to investigate and remediate vulnerabilities, audit findings, and configuration risks; apply least-privilege and secure-configuration principles across all platforms.
• Identify recurring incidents, determine root causes, and develop permanent corrective actions; evaluate operational work that can be automated, documented, or transitioned to IT Support.

Qualifications

• 7 or more years of hands-on enterprise systems engineering experience in complex production environments.
• Strong operational and architectural knowledge of Active Directory, including replication troubleshooting, DNS, authentication protocols (Kerberos, NTLM), and trust relationships.
• Hands-on production experience administering Entra ID, Azure AD Connect, Conditional Access, enterprise application registrations, RBAC, and Privileged Identity Management.
• Hands-on production experience with enterprise PKI and certificate services, including Microsoft ADCS or an equivalent platform, CA hierarchy management, template management, auto-enrollment, and troubleshooting of certificate chains, TLS errors, and web-server bindings.
• Hands-on production experience with AWS services including EC2, EBS, FSx, AWS Backup, and Patch Manager, with experience supporting Windows workloads in AWS.
• Deep experience administering and troubleshooting Windows Server and IIS in production environments, including application pools, web bindings, TLS configuration, and service dependencies.
• Experience with Microsoft 365 administration including Exchange Online, Teams, and hybrid identity environments; working knowledge of DKIM, DMARC, and SPF.
• Ability to independently write, test, and maintain production-quality PowerShell scripts.
• Strong written communication skills; ability to produce documentation detailed enough for another qualified engineer to execute without contacting the original author.