Senior Backup Engineer at Airways

Airways; Christchurch; On-site; NZD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Five weeks annual leave

Hybrid working model

Competitive salary + superannuation

Job summary

Airways seeks a Senior Backup Engineer at Christchurch to ensure availability and recoverability of backup services across the organisation. You will share accountability for the backup environment and support the IT Operations Manager.

You will monitor, test, and optimize backup strategies, working with VMware, Nutanix AHV, and HPE storage solutions, while participating in on-call coverage to maintain service continuity.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in enterprise infrastructure engineering.
• 3+ years with enterprise backup, replication & DR.
• Experience using Veeam or equivalent backup solutions.
• Experience with VMware vSphere and Nutanix AHV backups.

Responsibilities

• Daily monitoring and verification of backup services.
• Schedule recovery testing against RPO/RTO objectives.
• Resolve issues and escalate as needed.
• Maintain health of backup environment.
• Plan and validate recovery testing across estates.
• Assist in backup design for new services.

Skills

Backup expertise

VMware vSphere

Nutanix AHV

PowerShell scripting

Cyber resilience

Education

Diploma or degree

Veeam VMCE certification

Tools

Veeam

VMware vSphere

Nutanix AHV

HPE StoreOnce

HPE Alletra

HPE Apollo

Job description

About Airways:

Our people manage New Zealand's 30 million square kms of airspace, providing air traffic control, surveillance, communication, flight inspection, mapping, and airspace design services. We work with government, regulatory authorities, airlines, airports, and the general aviation community to ensure pilots, passengers and goods reach their destination - safely.

At Airways, our values underpin all that we do. We value Safety, One Airways, Excellence and Success in all that we do. Our organisation is made up of operational business groups that are supported by governance and corporate services functions. To learn more about our people and organisational structure, check out www.airways.co.nz/about.

About the Team:

The Technology Team is responsible for all technology disciplines within the air navigation services environment – engineering design, software design and development, systems architecture and infrastructure, asset management, installation and maintenance, technical training, workload planning, maintenance program development, project management, and logistics support. The purpose of the IT&SM team is to improve the performance of the organisation and to support and enable the Airways strategy through IT and Digital services and leadership. IT&SM lead the provision of good practice IT and digital services and systems in the areas of workplace technology, corporate business applications, digital engagement, digital document management, Information management, IT operations and desktop support.

About the Role:

We're expanding our IT&SM team with an opportunity available for a Senior Backup Engineer to join us on a permanent full-time basis at our Christchurch campus. Reporting to the National IT Operations Manager, you'll ensure the ongoing availability, recoverability and stability of Airways' backup and data protection services across the organisation. You'll hold shared accountability with the Principal Backup Engineer for the backup environment, providing a second point of deep platform capability across Airways' infrastructure estates.

• Daily monitoring and verification of backup and replication services
• Scheduling recovery testing and validation against agreed recovery objectives
• Proactively resolving issues and escalating as needed
• Maintaining the overall health of the backup environment
• Planning, executing and validating recovery testing against defined recovery point and recovery time objectives
• Assessing backup, recovery and retention requirements for new services and for infrastructure change
• Producing and maintaining system level documentation, runbooks and recovery procedures
• Providing backup, recovery and retention design input to infrastructure projects and to new services entering the Airways environment.

* For a full list of tasks and responsibilities, refer to the position description attached to the advert on our careers site.

About You:

Due to the nature of our operations and the role, you'll hold the necessary networking fundamentals to diagnose backup and replication traffic issues (routing, switching, VLANs, firewalls) with the ability to independently troubleshoot complex issues. You'll be comfortable providing support and coverage where required and and participating in the on-call roster to ensure service continuity.

• 5+ years' enterprise infrastructure engineering experience, including:
• 3+ years with direct responsibility for enterprise backup, replication and disaster recovery at enterprise level and across multiple infrastructure estates
• Administration, troubleshooting and recovery operations i.e. using Veeam or other market leading backup solution
• Working with backup and recovery of virtualised workloads on VMware vSphere and Nutanix AHV
• Backup and recovery of physical standalone workloads i.e. using Bare Metal Restore procedures.

• Enterprise backup infrastructure, tape library technologies, and storage platforms, including HPE StoreOnce, HPE Alletra, and HPE Apollo solutions
• Immutable, air gapped and offline backup design, including recovery from ransomware and data corruption events
• Microsoft Windows Server operating systems
• Microsoft Active Directory services, including application-consistent backup, authoritative and non-authoritative recovery, and service restoration
• Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 data protection, and backup and recovery services
• PowerShell scripting for backup automation, validation and reporting.
• Sound understanding of ITIL standards and processes, particularly incident, problem and change management.
• Proficiency needed to apply cyber resilience principles to data protection, including immutability, retention and recovery assurance.
• Knowledge of IT infrastructure standards, datacentre operations and enterprise architecture principles.
• Skill needed to relay technical risks and recovery status to non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to work in a dynamic business, collaborate with people, show resilience and agility, take ownership and focus on delivering successful outcomes.

• Experience working in a regulated, safety critical or 24x7 operational environment.
• Relevant tertiary qualification (diploma or degree) or equivalent vendor certification.
• Veeam certification (VMCE) or equivalent vendor backup certification.
• Exposure to backup and recovery of UNIX and Linux workloads.
• Experience working with HPE Compute (DL ProLiant) hardware.
• Knowledge of current and legacy applications and tools within a long-lived estate.
• Experience contributing data protection and recovery requirements at project design stage.

About Our Offering:

Airways offers a competitive package inclusive of a solid base salary and a generous superannuation scheme with employer contributions of up to 11% of earnings (T&Cs). We also offer five (5) weeks annual leave, vast learning opportunities, career progression opportunities, and a hybrid working model that provides flexibility and support. Airways is a great place to work, with an international reputation for innovation and success.

Permanent Full Time Job no: (TG - BL - CH) Location: Christchurch Closing Date: Tuesday, 8 September 2026