The Citrix Technical Lead and Subject Matter Expert (SME) will serve as the technical authority and operational lead for the organization’s Citrix environment within a large, highly regulated enterprise. This individual will be responsible for the architecture, design, implementation, optimization, security, and ongoing operational health of the Citrix platform while providing technical leadership to resources supporting both project delivery and day-to-day operations.
The ideal candidate combines deep Citrix expertise with strong leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills. This is a hands-on role requiring the ability to move between strategic architecture, complex technical troubleshooting, project execution, operational leadership, and executive-level communication.
A key expectation of the position is to continuously improve the environment by identifying opportunities to simplify operations, automate repetitive activities, improve resiliency, reduce operational risk, and modernize the Citrix platform while maintaining the governance, security, documentation, change control, and compliance requirements expected within a highly regulated enterprise.
Key Responsibilities
Architecture & Technical Leadership
- Serve as the organization’s senior technical authority and primary SME for Citrix technologies and associated infrastructure.
- Develop and maintain Citrix architecture, engineering standards, design patterns, technical roadmaps, and lifecycle strategies.
- Design and implement highly available, resilient, secure, and scalable Citrix solutions for enterprise workloads.
- Lead upgrades, migrations, platform modernization, capacity planning, performance optimization, and technology refresh initiatives.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend improvements that align with business, security, operational, and regulatory requirements.
- Provide technical leadership during complex incidents and facilitate root-cause analysis and permanent corrective actions.
Implementation & Project Delivery
- Provide hands-on architecture, engineering, and implementation services for complex Citrix initiatives.
- Translate business and technical requirements into practical architectures and implementation plans.
- Lead technical planning, solution design, testing, deployment, validation, and transition to operations.
- Identify project risks, technical dependencies, resource requirements, and implementation challenges and communicate them clearly to stakeholders.
- Ensure solutions are properly tested, documented, secured, and operationally supportable before transitioning into production.
- Provide technical leadership and day-to-day direction to resources performing Citrix project and operational work.
- Coordinate technical assignments, priorities, workloads, and deliverables across project and operational teams.
- Establish clear technical standards and ensure work is performed consistently and in accordance with enterprise requirements.
- Mentor technical resources and improve the overall capabilities and effectiveness of the Citrix team.
- Provide technical guidance and leadership during complex incidents, implementations, upgrades, and troubleshooting efforts.
- Work effectively across infrastructure, networking, security, application, service management, and business teams.
Operations & Continuous Improvement
- Drive operational excellence across the Citrix environment with a strong focus on reliability, performance, availability, security, and end-user experience.
- Identify repetitive, manual, or inefficient operational processes and develop creative approaches to simplify, standardize, or automate them.
- Challenge legacy processes where appropriate and identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency without compromising security, reliability, or regulatory requirements.
- Establish monitoring, health checks, operational procedures, capacity management, and proactive problem-prevention practices.
- Develop and maintain runbooks, operational documentation, architecture diagrams, configuration standards, and knowledge articles.
- Promote automation and scripting using technologies such as PowerShell and other enterprise automation tools.
- Establish meaningful operational metrics and use data to identify trends, recurring problems, and opportunities for improvement.
- Reduce operational complexity through standardization, automation, improved documentation, and elimination of unnecessary manual processes.
- Ensure Citrix architecture and operations align with enterprise cybersecurity, regulatory, audit, change-management, and risk-management requirements.
- Partner closely with cybersecurity and governance teams to address vulnerabilities, patching, access controls, configuration standards, and remediation activities.
- Maintain appropriate technical documentation and evidence to support audits, security reviews, and compliance requirements.
- Balance modernization and operational efficiency with the controls required within a highly regulated enterprise.
- Ensure appropriate change control, configuration management, segregation of duties, documentation, and operational governance are maintained.
Communication & Stakeholder Management
- Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to audiences ranging from engineers and business users to senior executives.
- Provide concise and accurate updates regarding platform health, technical risks, incidents, project status, architecture decisions, and recommended investments.
- Build strong working relationships across business, technology, cybersecurity, operations, vendor, and leadership teams.
- Lead technical discussions, architecture and design reviews, incident reviews, operational reviews, and executive-level presentations when required.
- Demonstrate sound judgment regarding when issues require technical escalation, management visibility, or executive communication.
- Serve as a trusted technical advisor capable of translating technical challenges into understandable business impact, risk, and recommended actions.
Required Qualifications
- Significant hands-on experience designing, implementing, supporting, and optimizing enterprise-scale Citrix environments.
- Hands-on experience with on-premises Citrix environments is required.
- Deep expertise with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Citrix Workspace, StoreFront, Delivery Controllers, Machine Creation Services (MCS), Citrix Provisioning, Citrix Gateway, and NetScaler technologies.
- Strong knowledge of supporting enterprise technologies including Microsoft Windows Server, Active Directory, Group Policy, virtualization, networking, storage, identity and access management, DNS, certificates, and authentication technologies.
- Experience supporting large, complex, highly available production environments where security, change control, business continuity, and regulatory compliance are critical.
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical resources responsible for both project delivery and production operations.
- Strong troubleshooting and root-cause-analysis capabilities across application, operating system, virtualization, network, authentication, and infrastructure layers.
- Experience with automation and scripting, particularly PowerShell, with a demonstrated ability to eliminate repetitive operational tasks.
- Strong understanding of monitoring, performance management, capacity planning, disaster recovery, business continuity, patch management, vulnerability management, and technology lifecycle management.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to tailor technical information appropriately for engineers, business stakeholders, management, and executives.
- Strong documentation skills, including architecture documents, implementation plans, operational procedures, runbooks, standards, and executive-level technical communications.
- Ability to evaluate emerging technologies and translate them into practical improvements for the enterprise environment.
- Creative and analytical mindset with a demonstrated focus on simplification, automation, standardization, reliability, resiliency, and continuous improvement.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting Citrix environments within utilities, financial services, healthcare, government, critical infrastructure, or other highly regulated organizations.
- Experience with enterprise monitoring, observability, IT service management, orchestration, and automation technologies.
- Experience leading major Citrix upgrades, migrations, consolidations, platform refreshes, or modernization initiatives.
- Experience working within formal change management, cybersecurity, audit, vulnerability management, and compliance frameworks.
- Relevant Citrix and Microsoft certifications or equivalent demonstrated enterprise experience.
Key Characteristics for Success
This role requires more than deep Citrix expertise. The successful candidate will be a hands-on technical leader who takes ownership of the environment, anticipates problems before they become incidents, challenges inefficient processes, and continuously looks for better ways to operate.
The individual must be equally comfortable developing architecture and technical strategy, performing hands-on engineering, leading technical resources, resolving critical production issues, and communicating with senior leadership. They must have the technical credibility to lead experienced engineers while also possessing the communication and business skills necessary to engage effectively with stakeholders throughout the organization.
The successful candidate will bring a strong continuous-improvement mindset, stay current with Citrix, virtualization, automation, security, infrastructure, and end-user computing technologies, and apply new capabilities thoughtfully to improve reliability, security, supportability, and operational efficiency.
The position is fully remote with flexibility to travel.