Sr. Systems Engineer

Clear Destination Inc.; Seattle, Northern (WA, KY); Hybrid; USD 85,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Evergreen Goodwill is seeking a Sr. Systems Engineer to own how technology works across our 26 locations—the infrastructure, store technology, and service model that keeps 2,000 people working.

This senior role focuses on domain ownership, setting standards, and leading modernization efforts. You will design and build the architecture across the domain, guiding implementation and reliability across locations. Hybrid work with in-office days is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Minimum 8+ years of systems engineering or related experience with domain ownership.
• Deep Windows Server and directory services experience.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture for a domain of the infrastructure estate (server/virtualization, identity, network).
• Own service and field coverage model across 26 locations.
• Lead store technology deployment and lifecycle for domain ownership.

Skills

Systems engineering

Virtualization

Networking

Identity & access

Automation scripting

Security posture

Technical writing

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/IT

Equivalent professional experience

Tools

VMware

Proxmox

Hyper-V

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

Sr. Systems Engineer

Reports to: Sr. Manager, IT Services
Supervises: None
Location: Evergreen Goodwill Administration - Hybrid, 3 days required in office
Band: $85,000 – $90,000

Position Summary

Evergreen Goodwill is seeking a Sr. Systems Engineer to own how technology works across our 26 locations — the infrastructure, the store technology, and the service model that keeps 2,000 people working.

This is the senior technical seat on our systems engineering team. You will own a domain rather than a queue: the coverage model for how we support locations, the standards for how systems get built and maintained, the lifecycle of the technology in our stores, and the architecture decisions inside your scope. When something in that domain breaks at scale, it is yours.

We are in the middle of significant infrastructure modernization — virtualization platform migration, identity rollout, endpoint modernization, and a point-of-sale replacement touching every store. You will be designing and building that, not inheriting it finished.

You will also raise the technical bar on this team. Our systems engineers are strong operators; we need someone who sets the standard they work to, reviews their designs, and develops them toward this level.

Where your authority sits. You decide within the domain you own — how systems are designed, what the coverage model is, what "correctly built" means for store technology. Standards that span the whole technology estate sit with our Enterprise Solutions Architect, and you are a peer in shaping them. Inside your domain, the calls are yours.

Key Responsibilities

Domain ownership

• Own the architecture for a domain of the infrastructure estate — some combination of server and virtualization platform, identity and access, network, endpoint fleet, and store technology
• Own the service and field coverage model across 26 locations: how work gets routed, what response looks like, and what we staff for
• Own the store technology lifecycle — standards, refresh planning, deployment, and retirement
• Own reliability for the systems in your domain, including incident command when something significant breaks

Standards and engineering practice

• Set the build, configuration, and operational standards the systems team works to. Write them down
• Review designs and significant changes before they reach production
• Define what "production-ready" means for infrastructure work, and hold work to it
• Work within enterprise architecture and change management standards, and help shape them

Infrastructure and modernization

• Lead infrastructure projects: virtualization migration, identity rollout, endpoint modernization, store technology deployment
• Design and build, hands‑on. This is not a review‑only role
• Automate at the level of the environment, not just your own tasks — configuration management, provisioning, and infrastructure‑as‑code where it earns its place

Security and resilience

• Own security posture within your domain: patching discipline, access model, hardening standards, and vulnerability response
• Own backup, restore verification, and disaster recovery testing. Prove the restores work

Vendor and asset management

• Manage vendor relationships for platforms and hardware in your domain, including evaluation and selection input
• Own asset standards and lifecycle planning, and the budget input that follows from them

Multiplication

• Raise the capability of the systems engineering team through review, standards, and teaching
• Mentor Level I and II engineers, and be explicit with them about what reaching the next level requires
• Document your work so someone else can carry it

Job‑Specific Qualifications

• 8+ years in systems engineering, infrastructure engineering, or systems administration, with demonstrated ownership of a domain rather than a task queue
• Deep Windows Server and directory services experience: Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, certificates, and the failure modes of each
• Strong virtualization experience — VMware, Proxmox, or Hyper‑V — including design, build, and migration, not only operation
• Strong networking: VLANs, routing, firewalls, VPN, and multi‑site connectivity design
• Identity and access architecture experience: SSO, MFA, conditional access, and access lifecycle
• Automation and scripting at a level that changes how the environment is managed — PowerShell, Bash, Python, or configuration management tooling
• Demonstrated experience setting technical standards that other engineers followed
• Experience owning infrastructure across multiple physical sites
• Experience owning security posture: patching, hardening, access, and vulnerability response
• Clear written communication. You will write standards other people have to follow, and explain a constraint to a non‑technical audience

Other / Preferred Qualifications

• Retail, logistics, warehousing, or another environment with distributed physical sites and frontline staff
• Point‑of‑sale, payment, or PCI‑scoped infrastructure experience
• Linux administration, Proxmox VE, KVM, or ZFS/Ceph storage
• Infrastructure‑as‑code — Terraform, Ansible, or similar — in production use
• Experience designing a field service or site support model, not only working inside one
• Experience leading an infrastructure migration end to end
• Mentoring or technical leadership of less experienced engineers
• Nonprofit, public sector, or mission‑driven experience

What we are deliberately not asking for

• People management experience. No direct reports. This is a senior individual contributor seat, and the ladder continues above it
• Specific vendor certifications. Platforms in our current environment are examples, not requirements — we are replacing several of them

Growth

This is Level III on the systems engineering ladder. The level above it is Architect, which is a band rather than a single seat — a Sr. Engineer who grows into architectural scope is promoted into it rather than waiting for a seat to open.

Minimum Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience. Demonstrated work carries more weight than credentials.

Minimum Years of Relevant Experience

8+ years.