Sr. Systems Engineer

About Evergreen Goodwill

Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1923 that helps people get jobs across Northwest Washington by offering high-quality free job training, education and job placement. Goodwill empowers individuals to overcome barriers to working, by providing comprehensive support and connecting them with life changing job opportunities, ensuring they are career-ready and can support themselves and their families.

The organization employs over 2,000 people, operates five job-training centers, 23 nonprofit retail stores and more than 27 donation sites in King, Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom and Kitsap Counties. Every day, Evergreen Goodwill connects people with the jobs, services and skills they need — because Jobs Change Lives. We are committed to creating and sustaining a culture of equity, diversity and inclusion (DEI) and are focused on creating a joyful, inclusive and successful organization.

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.

Everyone Is Welcome

When you join Evergreen Goodwill, you join a truly vibrant community. We value the things that make us different and unique. From diverse international and ethnic backgrounds, to languages, identities, ages, orientations, and beyond, Evergreen Goodwill celebrates individual and cultural diversity.

Why work at Evergreen Goodwill?

• A health plan that includes medical, dental, vision and prescription coverage

• 100% Employer-paid life, accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D), and long term disability insurance (for salaried employee)

• Voluntary supplemental coverage for life, accident, illness, and short- and long-term disability

• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) Plan

• Roth and 403(b) Retirement Savings Plan program

• Paid vacation, (9) holiday and sick time

• Limited paid time off for Jury Duty and Bereavement Leave

• Employee discounts

• Employee referral bonus

• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• Mentorship Program

• Career Advancement Opportunities

• Paid Job Training

EEO Statement: Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, citizenship, military status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, veteran status, or other protected characteristics in accordance with applicable law. This policy applies to all aspects of employment, including hiring, compensation, benefits, and termination.

This document does not represent a contract of employment, and EGNW reserves the right to change this job description and/or assign tasks for the employee to perform, as EGNW may deem appropriate.