Senior Systems Engineer (Platform & Infrastructure)

Zero Latency VR; City of Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Background check

Office in Melbourne

Job summary

Zero Latency VR is seeking an experienced infrastructure/platform engineer in Melbourne. The role combines keeping the office tech running with building systems that run in venues and in Azure, focusing on telemetry to preempt issues.

You’ll work across on‑prem and cloud, automate operations with PowerShell, and contribute C#/.NET services while collaborating with the Platform team and Future Technology Specialist.

Qualifications

• Senior, hands-on experience running hybrid Windows and network infrastructure: virtualisation, switching, firewalls, storage and identity.
• Strong PowerShell — written as maintainable code.
• Demonstrated experience working in a shared codebase: source control and pull requests.

Responsibilities

• Own the day-to-day operation of Melbourne office infrastructure: hypervisors, storage, switching, firewall, UPS and test rigs.
• Maintain hybrid on‑premises and Azure footprint; not a migration project.
• Collaborate on backups, DR, patching, identity, MFA, endpoint management, licences.
• Handle end-user IT: laptops, onboarding/offboarding, access and licences, meeting room AV.
• Build and extend platform systems that run in venues and in Azure; automate operations in PowerShell; develop services in C#/.NET.

Skills

Hybrid Windows infra

PowerShell scripting

Shared codebase experience

End-user IT ownership

Clear communication

C# / .NET

Azure familiarity

SQL Server

Telemetry tooling

Tools

Elastic

Kibana

Azure Functions

Infrastructure as Code

DevOps pipelines

Job description

Zero Latency builds and operates free-roam virtual reality entertainment. Our experiences run across a global network of more than 130 venues, operated by independent partners and licensees, while our Melbourne office builds and maintains the platform behind them. The systems this role touches run in every one of those venues and in Azure.

About the role

This role has two halves that reinforce each other. About 40% keeps Zero Latency's own technology running — the office network, the server room, and the people who use them. The other 60% sits inside our Platform team, building the systems that run in venues and in the cloud, with particular focus on telemetry: making venue behaviour visible so that we find out about problems before a venue picks up the phone.

We are looking for someone genuinely comfortable on both sides of that line — an infrastructure engineer who writes real software, or a software engineer who has actually racked, cabled and diagnosed physical equipment. The split is deliberate. Understanding the hardware and the network is what makes the monitoring work worth anything.

What you'll do

Infrastructure and corporate IT (~40%)

• Own the day-to-day operation of our Melbourne office environment: hypervisors, storage, switching, firewall, ISP redundancy, UPS, build agents and VR hardware test rigs.
• Keep our hybrid on-premises and Azure footprint healthy. We run hybrid deliberately and intend to keep doing so — this is not a migration project.
• Work alongside our existing infrastructure owner on backups and disaster recovery, patching, identity and MFA, endpoint management, and vendor and licence management. That load currently sits with one person who needs a capable second.
• Handle end-user IT: laptops, onboarding and offboarding, access and licences, meeting room AV. The volume is low, but it is a real part of the job and part of how the office functions.
• Document and, where sensible, automate the above so that none of it depends on one person's memory.

Platform and systems development (~60%)

• Join the Platform team properly — the same repositories, the same pull request review, and the same planning cycle as the rest of the engineers.
• Build and extend the systems that run in venues and in Azure.
• Automate operational work in PowerShell, and build services and tooling in C#/.NET where the job calls for it.
• Work with our Future Technology Specialist to evaluate emerging technology and bring the useful parts into the platform.

Monitoring and proactive support

This is the part of the role we most want to get right, and the reason the role exists in its current shape.

Today we find out about most venue problems when a venue tells us. We want to invert that. You will build the collection, transport, storage and query layer that makes venue behaviour visible, and then keep widening what it can see. In practice that means work such as anomaly detection over venue telemetry, automated triage and summarisation of incidents for our Client Services team, natural-language querying of venue data, and predictive failure signals on VR hardware before it fails in front of a customer.

Client Services owns alerting thresholds and incident response. You build the capability and propose what to watch; they decide what to escalation and act on.

What success looks like

In the first 90 days

• You can tell us, with data, what proportion of venue-impacting incidents we currently detect before a venue reports them. Nobody can answer that today — establishing the baseline is the first deliverable.
• A clear picture of which venue-side systems emit useful telemetry and which do not.
• An inventory and risk register for our office infrastructure: what is not backed up, what is not patched, and what is a single point of failure.
• Established working relationships with the Platform team and with Client Services.

In the first 12 months

• Telemetry coverage extended across venue-side systems, with newly opened venues instrumented by default rather than by hand.
• A materially larger set of failure modes that we can detect automatically, worked out jointly with Client Services from what actually goes wrong in venues.
• Measurable movement in the proportion of incidents detected before a venue reports them, against the baseline you set in your first 90 days.
• The office infrastructure risks you identified early are either closed or on an agreed plan.

What we're looking for

• Senior, hands-on experience running hybrid Windows and network infrastructure: virtualisation, switching, firewalls, storage and identity.
• Strong PowerShell — written as code someone else can maintain, not as one-off scripts.
• Demonstrated experience working in a shared codebase: source control, pull requests, and having your work reviewed.
• Willingness to own end-user IT alongside engineering work. This is a genuine part of the role, and we want someone who does not consider it beneath them.
• Clear communication with non-technical colleagues — you will regularly explain system changes to Client Services and the wider office.

Highly regarded

• C# / .NET.
• Azure — Functions, infrastructure as code, DevOps pipelines. We are happy for the right person to learn the Azure side on the job.
• SQL Server.
• Observability or telemetry tooling, such as Elastic and Kibana.
• Genuine hands-on hardware ability: building, testing and diagnosing physical equipment.
• Certifications are welcome, but we weight demonstrated experience and fit more heavily.

What this role is not

• It is not a game development role. You will not work in Unreal Engine or write gameplay code. If you are applying because we make VR games, this is not the job you want.
• It is not on-call. A dedicated 24/7 Client Services function covers venue support. You work office hours and coordinate with that team during those hours.
• It is not a helpdesk role, and it is not a pure software role. If you only want one of those two halves, you will be frustrated here.

Where this role goes

We expect this role to grow into leading platform hardware development at Zero Latency — investigating new technology, deciding what is worth building on, and working with the development team to turn it into product. If that is the direction you want your career to take, tell us so in your application.

Working at Zero Latency

• Melbourne-based, with a minimum of two days per week in the office — the same expectation we have of everyone. Some weeks the work will call for more.
• No travel expected.
• Appointment is subject to a background check, given the role's access to production systems and customer data.
• We hire for fit and demonstrated ability ahead of credentials.