IT -Staff Systems Engineer

Cadence Design Systems; United States; Remote; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Cadence Design Systems is seeking a senior IT infrastructure professional to manage and optimize our on‑prem datacenter operations across Windows and Linux servers, VMware environments, and Jenkins automation.

You will lead incident response, perform capacity planning, and coordinate cross‑functional teams to ensure high availability and reliability for development and QA environments. This role requires 10+ years of hands‑on experience and strong scripting skills.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive IT infrastructure experience
• Hands-on in on‑prem data centers including server, network, storage, UPS, and hardware lifecycle
• Strong Windows and Linux server administration in physical and virtual environments
• Experience with VMware virtualization and VM provisioning/migration plans
• Diagnosing enterprise network connectivity issues with VLANs, routing, DNS, DHCP, and firewalls
• Leading technical responders for power, network, and site infrastructure incidents
• Supporting engineering workstations, OS deployment, GPU setup, and software installs
• Experience maintaining Jenkins services and build/test agents across Windows and Linux

Responsibilities

• Install, configure, administer, monitor, and troubleshoot Windows/Linux servers and VMware environments.
• Perform health checks, tuning, backups, and preventive maintenance to improve reliability.
• Coordinate with providers and resolve WAN/local network faults.
• Respond to data center incidents and execute recovery/rollback plans.
• Support development teams with workstation hardware, environments, and tool issues.
• Build and maintain dev/test environments, including VM images and required packages.
• Set up, monitor, and troubleshoot Jenkins controller/agents; automate deployments.
• Create/run scripts, runbooks, recovery procedures, asset inventories, and docs.
• Coordinate infrastructure changes with minimal disruption to engineering.

Skills

Windows Admin

Linux Admin

Networking

Scripting

Incident Mgmt

Disaster Recovery

Change Control

Documentation

Vendor Coordination

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/ related field

Tools

VMware ESXi

VMware Workstation

Jenkins

Cisco Networking

WDS

Samba

rsync

DNS

DHCP

Job description

At Cadence, we hire and develop leaders and innovators who want to make an impact on the world of technology.

Key Responsibilities

• Install, configure, administer, monitor, and troubleshoot Windows and Linux servers, VMware environments, network devices, storage systems, and core infrastructure services.
• Perform routine health checks, performance tuning, capacity reviews, security hardening, patching, upgrades, backup validation, and preventive maintenance to improve availability and reliability.
• Coordinate with internet service providers, resolve WAN and local network faults.
• Act as the primary on-site responder for data center power failures, network outages, and other emergencies; execute documented backup, failover, recovery, rollback, and stakeholder communication plans.
• Support product development and QA teams by resolving workstation hardware failures, operating-system incidents, development-tool issues, environment configuration problems, and other on-demand infrastructure requests.
• Build and maintain Windows and Linux development, build, test, and quality-control environments, including physical systems and virtual machines with required packages, repositories, mounted directories, permissions, environment variables, and GPU configurations.
• Set up, administer, monitor, and troubleshoot Jenkins controller and agent infrastructure; automate system configuration, environment initialization, and job deployment across Windows and Linux.
• Create and maintain shell, Python, or PowerShell scripts, system images, runbooks, topology records, recovery procedures, asset inventories, and operational documentation.
• Coordinate infrastructure changes, maintenance windows, hardware procurement, vendor activities, migrations, acceptance testing, and handover while minimizing disruption to engineering operations.

Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, Network Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience

• 10+ years of progressive experience in IT infrastructure, data center operations, systems administration, network support, endpoint engineering, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience operating on‑premises data centers, including server, network, storage, UPS, power‑distribution, environmental, and hardware lifecycle responsibilities.
• Strong experience building, administering, patching, tuning, and troubleshooting Windows and Linux servers in both physical and virtual environments.
• Experience with VMware‑based virtualization, virtual‑machine provisioning, reusable system images, migration planning, rollback procedures, and service cutovers.
• Practical experience diagnosing enterprise network and ISP connectivity issues, working with global network teams, and supporting VLAN, routing, switching, firewall, DNS, and DHCP services.
• Experience leading or serving as the primary technical responder for power, network, server, storage, and site infrastructure incidents, including backup execution, recovery, escalation, and stakeholder communication.
• Experience supporting engineering workstations and development environments, including operating‑system deployment, hardware troubleshooting, development software installation, repository configuration, GPU setup, and user incident resolution.
• Hands‑on experience installing and maintaining Jenkins services and build/test agents, preferably across both Windows and Linux environments.
• Experience producing operational documentation, scripts, recovery plans, maintenance procedures, inventory records, and technical handover materials for distributed teams.

Technical Skills

• Advanced administration and troubleshooting skills for Windows Server and Linux distributions, including system installation, patching, performance tuning, services, permissions, storage, repositories, logs, and recovery.
• Strong working knowledge of VMware ESXi and VMware Workstation, virtual‑machine provisioning, image creation, resource configuration, migration, backup, and restoration.
• Hands‑on knowledge of enterprise networking, including Cisco switching, VLANs, routing, TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, firewall access, ISP troubleshooting, and network performance diagnostics; CCNA or comparable certification is preferred.
• Experience with storage and infrastructure services such as file services, Samba, rsync, FTP, WDS, web services, directory services, mounted file systems, backup systems, and access controls.
• Practical knowledge of data center hardware, server components, network equipment, UPS systems, power distribution, environmental monitoring, asset management, and vendor coordination.
• Jenkins administration experience, including controller and agent setup, node connectivity, job deployment, environment configuration, directory permissions, monitoring, and troubleshooting on Windows and Linux.
• Automation and scripting capability using Bash or shell scripting, Python, and PowerShell for system configuration, startup tasks, software deployment, monitoring, and repeatable operational workflows.
• Strong incident‑management, root‑cause‑analysis, disaster‑recovery, change‑control, documentation, and cross‑functional support practices in business‑critical engineering environments.

Soft Skills

• Strong communication and collaboration skills.
• Problem‑solving and analytical thinking.
• Ability to work independently and in a team environment.
• Strong organizational and time‑management skills.

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