Senior Infrastructure Engineer - Professional Services - 108069 - Grade 8

This is a Senior Infrastructure Engineer position focusing on specialized research infrastructure within the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Birmingham. The role involves the operational management, improvement, and future planning of a dedicated virtualisation and storage platform supporting academic research. Key requirements include substantial experience administering enterprise virtualised infrastructure, strong problem-solving skills, and the ability to collaborate effectively with academic colleagues.

• Take technical ownership of a dedicated research infrastructure platform, providing strategic direction and expert leadership for the development of virtual machines, storage, and related services that support academic research.
• Ensure the platform remains secure, stable, well-maintained and fit for purpose in support of live research activity.
• Plan and deliver essential upgrades, lifecycle activities and service improvements with minimal disruption to existing deployments.
• Manage day-to-day operation of the environment, including performance, capacity, resilience, availability and incident resolution.
• Maintain and support existing research deployments, working with academic users to understand operational needs and respond to issues effectively.
• Work with academic colleagues to understand new requirements and translate them into practical, reliable and supportable technical solutions.
• Lead or coordinate the procurement and replacement of infrastructure hardware, ensuring continuity, compatibility and value for money.
• Identify security risks, vulnerabilities and service weaknesses, and implement proportionate mitigations and improvements.
• Produce and maintain clear technical documentation covering current architecture, operational procedures, known issues and support arrangements.
• Contribute to service planning and decision-making around the future direction of the platform, including sustainability, support models and technical options.
• Work independently and use sound judgement when making changes to production services, escalating or seeking specialist support where appropriate.
• Collaborate with colleagues across IT and research support teams to ensure the platform aligns with wider University standards, policies and ways of working.
• Ensure appropriate backup, recovery and disaster recovery arrangements are in place and regularly reviewed.
• Act as technical authority for changes to the platform, following agreed change and risk management processes.
• Engage with external suppliers and vendors for support, escalation, maintenance and roadmap discussions.
• Where appropriate, improve operational efficiency through automation, scripting or Standardisation.
• Ensure platform operation aligns with relevant data protection, information governance and compliance requirements.
• Participate in incident review and continuous service improvement activities.
• Take technical ownership of the virtual machine and operating system layer, including build standards, configuration, patching and lifecycle management for Linux-based research workloads (predominantly Ubuntu Server).
• Maintain and support research service components deployed within virtual machines, including databases, containerised services and supporting middleware.

• Other relevant criteria from our equality and diversity knowledge, skills and experience document.
• Ability to identify issues with the potential to impact protected groups and take appropriate action.
• Educated to degree level or equivalent qualification plus substantial work experience in a relevant technical role in a relevant area.
• Where no equivalent qualification is held a proven track record of extensive and substantial work experience in a series of progressively more demanding and relevant roles will be required.
• Substantial experience supporting and administering enterprise virtualised infrastructure in production environments, delivering virtual machines, storage and related services.
• Strong practical understanding of virtualisation platforms, storage, infrastructure lifecycle management, patching, upgrades and hardware replacement.
• Experience of end-to-end service ownership, including operational support, troubleshooting, documentation, security risk management and continuous improvement.
• Ability to plan and deliver change safely in live research environments, with careful attention to continuity, risk and user impact.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security principles, operational risk and proportionate mitigations.
• Experience working directly with users or stakeholders to gather requirements and deliver practical, supportable technical solutions.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical matters clearly to non‑specialist colleagues.
• Proven ability to work independently, investigate issues methodically and make sound technical decisions with minimal supervision.
• The following would be highly desirable but not essential.
• Infrastructure & Virtualisation
• VMware‑based environments, including vSphere, vCenter and vSAN.
• Experience with backup and recovery platforms such as Veeam.
• Knowledge of converged or integrated infrastructure platforms (e.g. Dell VxRail or equivalent).
• Enterprise networking and security technologies, including Aruba networking and Fortinet (FortiGate) firewalls, or comparable platforms.
• Operating Systems & Configuration
• Linux server administration, particularly Ubuntu Server, including system hardening, patching and performance tuning.

• People are at the heart of what we are and do.
• The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.
• With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.
• We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate.
• We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.
• Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements.
• We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working.
• In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme.
• We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.
• The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.
• Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham
• We are a place of open, critical thinking, and the creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge.
• Professional Services put students at the heart of all they do and enable an exceptional educational experience.
• They provide outstanding support to our researchers and help the University to grow its influence regionally, nationally, and globally.
• They ensure the University’s resources are used wisely, manage and improve the infrastructure which sits at the heart of the institution, and support decisions to be made quickly and based on sound evidence.
• Our Birmingham Professional programme operates across the University, supporting colleagues to network and collaborate, offering opportunities to learn and develop, contributing to the delivery of the University’s objectives, and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work.
• benefits of working for the University of Birmingham
• Birmingham Professional programme
• operates across the University, supporting colleagues to network and collaborate, offering opportunities to learn and develop, contributing to the delivery of the University’s objectives, and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work.