Systems Engineer I at Essential Utilities

Essential Utilities, Inc. delivers safe, clean, reliable services that improve quality of life for individuals, families, and entire communities.

Operating as the Aqua (water and wastewater services) and the Peoples and Delta (natural gas) brands, Essential serves approximately 5.5 million people across 10 states. We are committed to sustainable growth, operational excellence, a superior customer experience, and premier employer status - including a competitive and comprehensive benefits package as well as a commitment to career growth opportunities.

We are advocates for the communities we serve and are dedicated stewards of natural lands, protecting more than 7,600 acres of forests and other habitats throughout our footprint.

Our company is one of the most significant publicly traded water, wastewater service and natural gas providers in the U.S.

​Are you looking for a fantastic career at Essential Utilities?  We have an exciting opportunity for a Systems Engineer I who has Red Hat Enterprise Linux experience. You will be reporting to the Manager of Infrastructure.  This role will provide design input, implement, and support IT infrastructure for Red Hat Linux and Windows Server operating systems. The Systems Engineer I will also collaborate with other IT professionals developing automation strategies and deployment processes. Resolve user issues, address change management requests, and identify potential issues by implementing protective measures, ensuring the highest levels of accessibility, optimization, and security. The responsibilities include architecture related to virtualization, cloud computing, storage area networks, backup platforms and disaster recovery.

Essential Duties:

• Provide the appropriate design, build, support and maintenance of operating systems, and other related systems software. Manage the up time and operations of primary computer systems.
• Participate, or as required, lead all phases of project life cycle for corporate initiatives – architect, design, build and operate, ensuring technology standards, baselines, and security practices are followed and implemented
• Deliver strategic oversight and planning for enterprise initiatives to ensure technology components are properly designed in alignment with enterprise strategies.
• Demonstrate excellent technical competency, reliability in delivering mission critical infrastructure on key technology trends in the areas of systems and virtualization technologies leading to innovative solutions for business problems and initiatives by working collectively with other systems engineers and administrators.
• Cohesively work with customer teams (business and technology) to evolve technology solutions.
• Provide daily administration and support of customer information systems on Windows, VMware, and Citrix platforms including security, system patches, upgrades, configuration changes and the maintenance of production and test configurations. 
• Monitor systems to ensure appropriate performance and SLA’s are not violated.  Must have the ability to troubleshoot SAN switching, SAN Storage, Ethernet switching, and server hardware as needed.
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation as it relates to server, storage, and network topology.  Provide required documentation for operational handover from design and build phase of projects.
• Participate in disaster recovery planning, testing and execution of the disaster plan when
• warranted in a real time/life situation and by way of annual testing.
• Facilitate the implementation of appropriate change management procedures following formal and informal processes when implementing production system changes.
• Maintain and ensure the reliability of all system backups and restores. Responsible for maintaining all aspects of information technology BCRS plan including vendor management.
• Follow security design and operation best practices to ensure the corporate network and entire infrastructure is operated and maintained in a secure environment. Monitor internal compliance and external threats to the mobile and desktop platforms.
• Ensure timely resolution of incident management events and request fulfillment in accordance with defined Help Desk policies and procedures.
• Other duties as assigned by management.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology or Computer Science, with 2-4 years engineering experience in Information Technology with Linux and Windows operating systems.
• Experience with NFS, CIFS, and SMB permissions.
• Knowledge of cloud computing platforms such as Azure.
• Experience with TCP/IP, Active Directory, NTP, DNS, and DHCP.
• Competency in BASH and PowerShell scripting preferred.
• RHCSA/RHCE certifications are a plus.
• Experience with Operational/SCADA technologies is favorable.
• VMware Certified Professional and/or Citrix certifications are a plus.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux experience.
• Windows Server, Active Directory, Azure, and VMware experience preferred.
• Ansible Automation experience is a plus.
• Operational Technology and SCADA experience a plus
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills; communicate effectively (clearly, concisely, and professionally) with internal customers.
• Strong customer service skills.
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously and adapt to changing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to work well under pressure.
• A team player able to work effectively in a team fostered multi-tasking environment.

Essential Utilities, Inc., is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Equal employment opportunity is provided to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to the following legally protected characteristics: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, pregnancy (including childbirth and related medical conditions, including medical conditions related to lactation), physical or mental disability, covered-veteran status, genetic information (including testing and characteristics), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or any other characteristic protected by applicable local, state or federal law.
Essential Utilities is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities.  If you have a condition that may prevent you from applying for a job online or need to request an accommodation during the interview process, please call (1-877-271-9012).  
To maintain the integrity of the recruitment process and to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest due to employment and/or assignment of family members and personal referrals, specific guidelines apply to the hiring and assignment of these individuals including, but not limited to:

• Family members cannot result in a supervisor/subordinate reporting relationship
• Family members cannot work in the same department.