Senior Systems Engineer – On-Prem & Automation

Sword Group; Newcastle upon Tyne; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 85,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Personalised Career Development

Flexible working

Fantastic Benefits Package

Job summary

Sword Group is seeking an experienced Senior Systems Engineer to join our Managed Services team. You will support and improve customer systems across on-premise and datacentre environments, taking ownership and working methodically to prevent problems rather than simply reacting to tickets.

You'll cover server, virtualization, storage, backup, identity and platform services, with observability and automation at the core of how you work.

Qualifications

• Strong operational knowledge of Windows Server, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy and core datacentre services.
• Strong technical knowledge of on-premises and datacentre services, including server platforms, virtualization, storage, backup and recovery.
• Proven experience supporting Windows and/or Linux server environments, covering configuration, troubleshooting, patching, hardening and lifecycle management.
• Experience operating enterprise virtualization, storage, backup and recovery platforms, with a sound understanding of availability, capacity, resilience and recovery requirements.
• Strong diagnostic capability across compute, storage, networking, backup, identity and application dependency layers, including complex and high-impact service issues.
• Experience working within an ITIL-aligned managed service environment across incident, problem, change, service request and knowledge-management processes.
• Ability to use observability, monitoring and service data to assess platform health, identify risk, improve alert quality and reduce recurring operational noise.
• Experience creating automation and scripts using PowerShell, Bash or Python to improve consistency and reduce manual effort.
• Ability to act as a senior escalation point, produce clear operational documentation, guide customers and engineering teams, manage supplier escalations, and support service onboarding and operational readiness.

Responsibilities

• Monitoring service health and using alerts, logs, metrics and trend data to identify degradation before it becomes a larger issue.
• Investigating and resolving incidents across Windows Server, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy, virtualization, storage, backup and related services.
• Managing incidents, service requests, changes and operational tasks against agreed service commitments and customer priorities.
• Supporting root-cause analysis and problem management, with a focus on permanent fixes rather than repeated workarounds.
• Carrying out patching, configuration changes, vulnerability remediation, platform maintenance and operational housekeeping.
• Supporting upgrades, migrations, hardware refreshes, decommissioning and transition of new environments into managed service support.
• Identifying opportunities to automate repetitive work, improve consistency and reduce operational risk.
• Maintaining accurate technical documentation, standard operating procedures, knowledge articles and support records.
• Working with service management, customer teams, suppliers and technical specialists to resolve issues across connected services.
• Communicating clearly during incidents, changes and improvement activity, giving customers evidence and context rather than vague technical updates.

Skills

Windows Server

Active Directory

DNS/DHCP

Virtualisation

Storage

Backup

Identity

Automation

Observability

PowerShell

Tools

PowerShell

Bash

Python

Job description

Sword Group is seeking an experienced Senior Systems Engineer to join our Managed Services team. You will support and improve customer systems across on-premise and datacentre environments, taking ownership and working methodically to prevent problems rather than simply reacting to tickets.

You'll cover server, virtualization, storage, backup, identity and platform services, with observability and automation at the core of how you work.