Senior VMware Operations Specialist

Senior VMware Day 2 Operations SpecialistDuration: 6 months with possibility of extensionExpected Start Date: asapWork Arrangement/Location: Charleston, SC / RemoteKey Skills and Knowledge:Dell Hardware knowledgeVMware environmentsvCenter ServerESXi hostsClustersDatastoresVirtual machinesTemplatesResource poolsDistributed switchingJob Summary:The Senior VMware Day 2 Operations Specialist is responsible for the ongoing administration, stability, performance, security, and continuous improvement of VMware virtualized environments after implementation and handover to operations. This role serves as a senior technical escalation point for operational incidents, service requests, changes, and problem management across VMware vSphere and related infrastructure platforms. The specialist works closely with infrastructure, storage, networking, security, backup, service desk, and application teams to maintain reliable services, resolve complex issues, and improve operational maturity.Key Responsibilities:Administer and support VMware environments, including vCenter Server, ESXi hosts, clusters, datastores, virtual machines, templates, resource pools, and distributed switching.Provide senior-level troubleshooting for incidents involving availability, performance, capacity, connectivity, host failures, VM issues, and virtualization-related service degradation.Perform root-cause analysis and contribute to problem-management activities, corrective actions, and prevention plans.Plan and execute approved changes, including host maintenance, patching, upgrades, configuration updates, workload migrations, and cluster balancing.Monitor platform health, capacity, performance, alarms, and operational trends; identify risks before they affect business services.Support high-availability, distributed-resource-scheduling, vMotion, storage virtualization, and disaster-recovery capabilities as applicable to the environment.Coordinate with storage and network teams to investigate latency, multipathing, VLAN, routing, MTU, and connectivity issues affecting VMware workloads.Maintain operational documentation, support procedures, architecture records, configuration baselines, and knowledge articles.Validate backup, restore, replication, and recovery processes in partnership with data-protection and disaster-recovery teams.Support vulnerability remediation, security hardening, access reviews, compliance evidence, and audit activities for the virtualization platform.Participate in on-call rotations, major-incident response, service reviews, and post-incident retrospectives.Mentor junior administrators and promote consistent use of operational standards, automation, and IT service-management practices.Required Qualifications:5+ years of hands-on experience supporting enterprise VMware environments in a production operations role.Strong experience with VMware vSphere, vCenter Server, ESXi, clusters, HA, DRS, vMotion, virtual networking, and virtual storage.Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex infrastructure incidents across compute, storage, networking, operating systems, and applications.Experience with change management, incident management, problem management, and service-level commitments.Working knowledge of scripting or automation, such as PowerCLI, PowerShell, Python, or REST APIs.Experience supporting patching, lifecycle management, monitoring, backup, disaster recovery, and security remediation.Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical issues to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.Preferred Qualifications:VMware Certified Professional or higher, such as VCP-DCV or VCAP-DCV.Experience with VMware Aria, vSAN, NSX, Site Recovery Manager, HCX, or VMware Cloud environments.Familiarity with enterprise storage platforms, SAN/NAS technologies, IP networking, Linux, and Windows Server.Experience with observability, configuration-management, infrastructure-as-code, or automation platforms.ITIL certification or equivalent experience with structured IT service management.Experience operating in regulated, highly available, or global enterprise environments.Success Measures:High availability and stable performance of the VMware platform.Timely resolution of incidents and reduction of repeat incidents.Safe, well-documented, and successful change execution.Accurate capacity planning and proactive risk management.Improved recovery readiness, security posture, automation, and operational documentation.Consistent customer and stakeholder satisfaction with virtualization services.