Data Center Engineer

Albany International is a global advanced textiles and materials processing company with two core businesses.

Albany Engineered Composites is a rapidly growing supplier of highly engineered composite parts for the aerospace industry.

Machine Clothing is the world's leading producer of custom-designed fabrics and belts essential to production in the paper, nonwovens, and other process industries.

About Global Information Services (GIS)

Global Information Services is the team within Albany chartered with providing leading-edge systems and technologies to internal users as well as Albany customers. GIS provides services ranging from Information Technology Strategy to infrastructure development and maintenance, with a unique and intense focus on customer service.

About our Enterprise Data Services group

Our Enterprise Data Services group is responsible for Albany's Global Data Centers which will house many of the Enterprise Systems, including PTC WindChill, Intranet, operational support and manufacturing processing systems. Our professional team of engineers works with the latest in new infrastructure technologies in combination with other GIS departments to ensure a functional, well-performing, reliable, and secure environment for our enterprise applications and communications needs.

The Data Center Engineer is responsible for operating and managing the organization's Global Data Centers in alignment with the Global Information Services (GIS) strategy and objectives. This role involves planning, coordinating, and executing IT-related initiatives while providing technical support to internal GIS teams. The Data Center Engineer collaborates closely with departmental leaders to identify needs, recommend solutions, and implement cost-effective technologies that support the organization's operational and strategic goals.

Responsibilities:

• Configure, monitor, and troubleshoot enterprise storage, compute, data protection, and networking systems on an ongoing basis.
• Implement enterprise-level data center solutions across architecture, security, data protection, disaster recovery, monitoring, and provisioning.
• Ensure all solutions align with organizational policies, platform standards, cloud strategies, data governance, and reference architectures.
• Provide engineering expertise and escalation support to operations and functional teams.
• Conduct root cause analysis and deliver recommendations to prevent recurrence of issues.
• Provision and decommission virtual compute and storage resources within Hyper-V and Azure IaaS environments.
• Install, configure, operate, and maintain data center hardware, software, and related infrastructure, including Hyper-V virtualization, NetApp storage, and Dell servers.
• Document technology implementations and operational procedures to ensure adherence to established standards and best practices.
• Oversee server, storage, and backup monitoring while maintaining accurate infrastructure documentation and compliance with IT standards.
• Maintain deep knowledge of data center architecture, industry trends, and emerging technologies to ensure optimal utilization of enterprise assets.

Formal Education & Certification

• BS Degree in computer science or engineering
• Microsoft Azure certification or training

Knowledge & Experience

• 3-5 years of experience working with data center technologies in an engineering role with progressively increasing responsibilities.
• Demonstrated knowledge and hands-on implementation of High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, and Performance Tuning best practices.
• Experience in manufacturing or Department of Defense (DoD) environments is highly desirable.
• Strong understanding of enterprise-level storage, compute, and networking concepts and technologies.
• Advanced proficiency with Azure IaaS components, including compute (VMs, containers, serverless, PaaS services), storage (Blob, File Share, Storage Accounts), and networking (Azure Firewall, NSGs, VNETs).
• Experience administering Windows and Linux server systems in Hyper-V and Azure IaaS environments.
• Working knowledge of TCP/IP networking, including ACLs, VLANs, and routing.
• Familiarity with infrastructure monitoring tools such as Azure Monitor and SCOM.
• Strong skills in configuration management, Infrastructure-as-Code, scripting, and markup languages (PowerShell, YAML, JSON, Ansible, Terraform).
• Solid understanding of Azure cloud security principles, including NSGs, RBAC, service-to-service authentication, least-privilege access models, and environment segmentation.
• Operational proficiency applying ITSM frameworks to daily workflows and processes.

Personal Attributes

• Strong supervisory and leadership skills.
• Excellent written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Ability to conduct and direct research into IT issues and products.
• Ability to present ideas in business-friendly and user-friendly language.
• Highly self-motivated, self-directed, and attentive to detail.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.
• Extensive experience working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
• Embrace continuous learning to broaden and harden technical, business, written and verbal communication skills.
• Require strong communicating skills in remote phone or video conferencing situations

Work Conditions:

• Domestic and International travel required.
• Sitting for extended periods of time.
• Dexterity of hands and fingers to operate a computer keyboard, mouse, power tools, and to handle other computer components.
• Occasional inspection of cables in floors and ceilings.
• Lifting and transporting of moderately heavy objects, such as computers and peripherals.
• Off hours/on call support as required.

Other Requirements

• US Citizens and those authorized to work in the US are encouraged to apply, we are unable to sponsor at this time.