Director, Systems Engineer

Cohen & Steers; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 185,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Cohen & Steers is seeking a Director, Systems Engineer to join the Information Technology team in New York. The role is a hands-on generalist position focused on design, implementation, maintenance, and performance of global systems to ensure availability, security, and consistency across environments.

The ideal candidate will lead operations and engineering efforts, collaborate with multiple technology teams, and drive core business initiatives.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 10+ years in IT infrastructure, preferably financial trading environment.
• Ability to work under pressure with multiple tasks and deadlines.
• Experience with Citrix technologies and Citrix Cloud is a big plus.
• Extensive cloud experience in Azure and AWS with IaaS/PaaS.
• Strong AD, security, and scripting capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Maintain secure, up-to-date environment and ensure operational excellence.
• Lead end-to-end projects for application implementations per guidelines.
• Support back-office apps including trading and fund accounting systems.
• Manage Windows Server environments, patching, security, and performance.
• Maintain VMware, Citrix, and infrastructure for reliability and capacity planning.
• Document management and cross-team collaboration; on-call duties included.

Skills

Cloud & virtualization

Scripting & automation

Windows Server administration

Security & compliance

Communication & teamwork

Tools

Citrix

Azure

AWS

VMware

SCCM

PowerShell

Job description

Job Title: Director, Systems Engineer

Department: Information Technology

Reports To: VP, Head of Systems Engineering

FLSA Code: Exempt

Estimated Salary: $185,000 - $200,000

Job Summary

The ideal candidate will be part of the Infrastructure team responsible for the design, implementation, maintenance, and performance of all global systems, ensuring availability, security, and consistency for our environment. This position is “hands‑on” generalist - requiring solid technical skills, as well as excellent interpersonal and communication skills. The role will be both operations and highly engineering focused, working with different technology teams to deliver core business initiatives. Cohen & Steers is committed to an inclusive culture, valuing diversity in support of our people and clients.

Major Responsibilities/Activities

• Maintain operational excellence by keeping environment secure and up to date.
• Responsible for project tasks throughout the life cycle of application implementation following best practices and architectural guidelines.
• Provide support to back‑office applications such as trading platforms, fund accounting systems, financial accounting systems.
• Responsible for end‑to‑end Windows Server management, including patch management, security update implementation and performance monitoring and tuning across development, test, and production environments.
• Configure, install, maintain, and provide support for critical software and hardware components of our VMware virtualization environment.
• Responsible for updating and maintaining all documentation requested by management and will be tasked with improving such documentation as required.
• Provide trouble shooting and assisting help desk support group in resolving escalated issues.
• Monitor and provide statistical reports on the health and operational status of all infrastructure systems, monitor system capacity utilization.
• Aid in capacity planning and performance monitoring to ensure that Infrastructure systems are meeting the needs of the business.
• Assist with various day‑to‑day management of server environment.

Minimum Requirements

• Requires a minimum of 10+ years of experience working within an IT infrastructure group, preferably with Financial experience in a trading environment.
• Ability to work under pressure, managing multiple tasks with accuracy and to meet demanding deadlines, possessing strong ethics and the ability to maintain confidentiality.
• Advanced experience in Citrix technologies – Delivery Controller, PVS, StoreFront, Netscaler / VPX configuration deployments.
• Experience with Citrix Cloud is a big plus.
• Extensive experience in the Azure and AWS public clouds with IaaS and PaaS workloads, including management of VNets/VPCs, private networking, storage accounts, Containers, Function Apps, and managed databases.
• Strong experience managing a Cisco UCS compute environment as well as PURE storage array or similar.
• Working knowledge of SCCM or similar platform used to keep systems up to date and package deployments.
• Extensive experience planning, designing, deploying, and maintaining Windows Servers, including Microsoft applications, such as SQL, Exchange, and Active Directory.
• Expertise in Active Directory – troubleshooting, setting up replication and new domains, creating and consolidating GPOs, ACLs.
• Well-rounded knowledge of Office 365, Azure-AD and related Microsoft services.
• Experience with managing and maintaining MS security services such as Defender ATP and Intune a big plus.
• Experience with vulnerability scan platforms and remediation, such as Rapid 7.
• Understanding of infrastructure security and authentication processes. SAML, Kerberos, RADIUS & MFA.
• Experience with privileged access management and privileged identity management.
• Day to Day management of monitoring platforms and tailoring advance alerting & reports.
• Experience in PowerShell scripting and working with code repositories and CI/CD pipelines.
• Root Cause analysis and troubleshooting experience is required.
• Familiar with building and maintaining task scheduling platforms.
• Must be willing to work weekends and evenings and be on call as required; the responsibilities are for a 7x24 IT operation dispersed amongst the team.
• Must maintain a sincere, polite, and respectful customer service attitude when working with the business.
• Ability to support multiple globally dispersed locations.
• Excellent communication, organization, and interpersonal skills.
• Demonstrates inclusive behaviors in support of a culture that values diverse perspectives
• Agrees to comply with the firm’s hybrid work policy (“work from home policy,” as aligned with the Company’s employee handbook), which currently requires reporting to the Company’s New York City office four (4) days per week, with one (1) remote workday permitted.

Nice to Have

• Experience with general database administration of SQL Server.
• Experience with cloud cybersecurity best practices, Entra ID, Azure Policies, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Backup Center, and other Azure services.
• Some experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Cloud Adoption Framework/Well Architected Framework best practices.

Note: This job description reflects management's assignment of essential functions; it does not prescribe or restrict the tasks that may be assigned. The job title or duties and responsibilities may be changed by the Company at any time.