Senior Virtualization and Storage Administrator

Macdonald, Dettwiler And Associates Corporation; Richmond; Hybrid; CAD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

MDA Space is seeking a Senior Virtualization and Storage Administrator to own and support enterprise virtualization and storage across the organization. You will design, operate, secure, monitor, and optimize SAN, NAS, Hyper‑V, Proxmox, and related infrastructure services.

The role requires deep hands‑on technical capability, strong troubleshooting, automation skills, and collaboration with Backup, Network, Security, Linux, Windows, and application teams in a hybrid work environment in Canada.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressive systems administration or infrastructure engineering experience focusing on virtualization and enterprise storage.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of relevant experience and certifications.
• Experience administering VMware vSphere/ESXi, Hyper-V, and Proxmox VE.
• Experience with enterprise storage platforms such as Dell EMC PowerStore/ Unity XT, NetApp, or equivalent storage protocols.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, administer, monitor, and optimize enterprise virtualization platforms including VMware vSphere/ESXi, Hyper‑V, and Proxmox VE.
• Plan and execute workload migrations between virtualization platforms, with rollback, testing, and stakeholder communication.
• Design, implement, and administer enterprise storage platforms including SAN, NAS, DAS, block, file, and cloud‑integrated storage.
• Manage storage presentation and connectivity including LUN provisioning, zoning, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, SMB, MPIO, snapshots, replication, and capacity allocation.
• Develop and test disaster recovery and business continuity runbooks for virtual workloads and storage services.
• Mentor junior administrators and provide technical guidance for complex virtualization and storage issues.
• Create and maintain operational documentation and runbooks.

Skills

Virtualization expertise

Storage administration

Automation scripting

Troubleshooting

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

VMware vSphere/ESXi

Hyper-V

Proxmox VE

Dell EMC PowerStore

NetApp

Unity XT

Job description

Senior Virtualization and Storage Administrator

Job Category : Information Technology

• Full-Time
• Hybrid

Locations

Showing 1 location

Description

Building the space between proven and possible, MDA Space (TSX:MDA) is a trusted mission partner to the global space industry. A robotics, satellite systems and geointelligence pioneer with a 55-year+ story of world firsts and more than 450 missions, MDA Space is a global leader in communications satellites, Earth and space observation, and space exploration and infrastructure. The MDA Space team of more than 4,000 space experts in Canada, the US and the UK has the knowledge and know-how to turn an audacious customer vision into an achievable mission – bringing to bear a one-of-a-kind mix of experience, engineering excellence and wide-eyed wonder that’s been in our DNA since day one. For those who dream big and push boundaries on the ground and in the stars to change the world for the better, we’ll take you there.

The Role:

MDA Space is seeking a Senior Virtualization and Storage Administrator, to own and support enterprise virtualization and storage platforms across the organization. The successful candidate will design, operate, secure, monitor, and optimize SAN, NAS, Hyper-V, Proxmox, and related infrastructure services. This role will support high availability, disaster recovery, capacity planning, platform lifecycle management, and migration initiatives, including reducing dependency on legacy virtualization platforms where appropriate. The role requires deep hands‑on technical capability, strong troubleshooting discipline, automation skills, and the ability to collaborate with Backup, Network, Security, Linux, Windows, and Application teams.

. Job Responsibilities:

• Design, deploy, administer, monitor, and optimize enterprise virtualization platforms including Microsoft Hyper‑V, Proxmox VE, VMware vSphere/ESXi and related management tooling.
• Support virtualization platform lifecycle activities including upgrades, patching, cluster configuration, host firmware coordination, compatibility validation, and retirement of legacy platforms.
• Plan and execute workload migrations between virtualization platforms, including VMware to Hyper‑V or Proxmox, with appropriate rollback, testing, documentation, and stakeholder communication.
• Design, implement, and administer enterprise storage platforms including SAN, NAS, DAS, block, file, and cloud‑integrated storage.
• Manage storage presentation and connectivity including LUN provisioning, zoning coordination, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, SMB, MPIO/multipathing, snapshots, replication, deduplication, and capacity allocation.
• Monitor and tune virtualization and storage performance, including host CPU/memory contention, VM latency, datastore latency, IOPS, throughput, storage queue depth, network paths, and capacity trends.
• Work closely with Backup, Network, Security, Windows, Linux, and application teams to maintain resilient infrastructure aligned to business RTO and RPO requirements.
• Develop, maintain, and test disaster recovery and business continuity runbooks for virtual workloads and storage services.
• Ensure high availability configurations are documented, tested, and aligned with business resiliency objectives.
• Perform regular system updates, patches, and security configurations.
• Create and maintain detailed documentation of the virtualization and storage infrastructure.
• Support security and compliance requirements through hardening, access control, privileged account management, patch compliance, vulnerability remediation, and audit evidence.
• Develop and implement automation scripts to improve system efficiency and reduce manual tasks.
• Conduct capacity planning and prepare recommendations for hardware refresh, platform consolidation, storage growth, lifecycle risk, and cost optimization.
• Participate in change management, project planning, vendor coordination, and after‑hours support as required.
• Serve as the senior escalation point and technical lead for virtualization and storage‑related incidents and projects.
• Mentor junior administrators and provide technical guidance for complex virtualization and storage issues.
• Other duties as required

Must‑have Qualifications:

• 8+ years of progressive systems administration or infrastructure engineering experience, with significant hands‑on focus on virtualization and enterprise storage.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of relevant experience and certifications.
• Strong hands‑on experience administering at least two of the following: VMware vSphere/ESXi, Microsoft Hyper‑V, Proxmox VE
• Strong hands‑on experience with enterprise storage platforms such as Dell EMC PowerStore, Unity XT, NetApp, or equivalent with knowledge of block and file storage protocols such as Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, and SMB.
• Experience supporting enterprise environments consisting of hundreds of virtual machines, multiple virtualization clusters, and critical production workloads across multiple data centers.
• Experience supporting high availability virtualization clusters and shared storage environments.
• Experience with enterprise backup, restore, replication, and disaster recovery practices.
• Strong troubleshooting ability across compute, storage, network, operating system, and backup layers.
• Scripting or automation experience using PowerShell plus at least one of Bash, Python, Ansible, PowerCLI, or REST APIs.
• Understanding of infrastructure security practices including patching, hardening, privileged access, least privilege, and audit readiness.
• Experience administering both Windows Server and Linux systems in physical and virtual environments.
• Extensive experience in designing High Availability systems across the enterprise to meet the disaster recovery and business continuity objectives.
• Ability to create and maintain operational documentation, diagrams, standards, and runbooks.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work with infrastructure, security, application, and business stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Microsoft Failover Clustering, Hyper‑V Replica, Windows Admin Center, Storage Spaces Direct, or Azure Arc.
• Experience with VMware‑to‑Hyper‑V, VMware‑to‑Proxmox, or other hypervisor migration projects.
• Experience integrating virtualization and storage solutions with Azure and AWS.
• Experience with storage replication, snapshots, immutable backup, and DR testing
• Experience with SAN fabrics, Brocade storage networking.
• Experience monitoring virtualization and storage environments with monitoring platforms such as SolarWinds, or equivalent.
• Experience administering enterprise backup platforms such as Commvault, Veeam, NetBackup, Rubrik, or equivalent.
• Experience in regulated or security‑sensitive environments.
• Certifications such as VMware VCP, Microsoft Windows Server Administrator/Hybrid Administrator, Azure Administrator, storage vendor certification, or backup platform certification.

Special Considerations:

Successful candidates must obtain and hold security clearance at the secret status level, and pass security assessment for the Controlled Goods Program (CGP), and be able to obtain higher clearances.

Benefits Statement:

MDA Space offers competitive compensation and benefits to its employees at all of its locations. As a member of the MDA Space team, you and your eligible dependents can enroll in a benefits plan that provides a comprehensive level of protection through competitive health care, including: health care plans supplemental and flexible drug plans, dental and vision benefits, disability income protection, life insurance, group retirement savings plans and an employee assistance program and to their family.

Equal Opportunity Statement:

MDA Space is an equal opportunity employer with a strong focus on diversity and inclusion. We are committed to treating all employees and candidates with respect and dignity. If you require assistance or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruitment process, please let us know.