Senior Storage Engineer

Senior Storage EngineerLocation: Hybrid in Plano or Dallas area, TX (2-3days) Contract 6 Plus monthsWe are seeking a highly experienced Senior Storage Administrator with a minimum of 20 years of overall IT infrastructure experience, with extensive hands-on expertise in enterprise storage technologies. The ideal candidate will have deep technical knowledge of Pure Storage, Dell EMC Isilon/PowerScale, and Dell EMC Unity, along with a strong understanding of VMware vSphere virtualization environments.Key ResponsibilitiesDesign, administer, maintain, and troubleshoot enterprise SAN and NAS storage environments.Serve as a senior technical resource for Pure Storage FlashArray, including provisioning, protection, replication, snapshots, performance analysis, capacity management, upgrades, and troubleshooting.Manage Dell EMC Isilon/PowerScale environments, including clusters, SmartPools, SmartConnect, snapshots, replication, quotas, SMB/NFS services, capacity, and performance.Administer Dell EMC Unity storage systems, including block and file storage, LUNs, storage pools, hosts, snapshots, replication, and performance monitoring.Perform storage provisioning and reclamation for Windows, Linux, VMware, database, and application environments.Manage SAN connectivity and troubleshoot storage-related issues across hosts, storage arrays, and Fibre Channel infrastructure.Support storage replication, disaster recovery, backup integration, and business continuity requirements.Monitor storage performance, utilization, latency, IOPS, throughput, and capacity trends and proactively address potential issues.Plan and execute storage firmware, Purity OS, OneFS, Unity OE, and related infrastructure upgrades.Perform root cause analysis for complex storage incidents and provide recommendations for permanent resolution.Develop storage capacity forecasts and provide recommendations for expansion, refresh, and technology lifecycle planning.Maintain storage infrastructure documentation, architecture diagrams, operational procedures, standards, and configuration records.Work closely with VMware, Windows, Linux, database, backup, network, and application teams.Participate in infrastructure changes, migrations, hardware refreshes, data center activities, and disaster recovery exercises.Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and escalation support to junior storage administrators.Coordinate with hardware/software vendors and support teams for complex technical issues.Required QualificationsMinimum 20 years of IT infrastructure experience, with significant experience supporting enterprise storage technologies.Extensive hands-on experience with Pure Storage FlashArray.Extensive hands-on experience with Dell EMC Isilon/PowerScale.Strong hands-on experience with Dell EMC Unity storage.Strong knowledge of enterprise SAN and NAS architectures.Strong understanding of Fibre Channel concepts, zoning, multipathing, host connectivity, and storage presentation.Experience supporting storage for Windows and Linux operating systems.Experience with storage replication, snapshots, disaster recovery, and high-availability technologies.Strong troubleshooting skills across storage, SAN, host, and application layers.Experience performing storage capacity planning, performance analysis, firmware upgrades, and lifecycle management.Strong understanding of enterprise change management, incident management, problem management, and operational processes.VMware Virtualization Knowledge - The candidate should be familiar with VMware vSphere/ESXi environments and understand the interaction between VMware and enterprise storage, including:VMware ESXi host storage connectivityVMFS and NFS datastoresFibre Channel storage presentation to ESXiMultipathing and path managementVMware datastore provisioning and expansionStorage performance troubleshooting for virtual machinesVMware snapshots versus storage-array snapshotsStorage vMotion conceptsVMware HA/DRS conceptsStorage integration with disaster recovery solutionsDeep VMware administration experience is not mandatory; however, the candidate must be capable of working effectively with VMware administrators when troubleshooting storage-related issues.