Virtualization Engineer

About SMBC Group

SMBC Group is a leading global financial organization headquartered in Tokyo with a rich 400-year history. It offers diverse financial services including banking, leasing, securities, credit cards, and consumer finance, operating through more than 130 offices and employing 80,000 people across nearly 40 countries. The holding company, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (SMFG), is one of Japan's top three banking groups, listed on Tokyo, Nagoya, and New York Stock Exchanges.

In the Americas and Europe, SMBC maintains operations in the US, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. Leveraging strong capital backing and extensive Asian market connections, it provides commercial and investment banking services to corporate, institutional, and municipal clients through various subsidiary companies.

This role is hybrid in nature but requires presence at the Tralee office in County Kerry, Ireland for on-site work.

Role Overview

We invite applications from an experienced VMware Systems Engineer to join our Enterprise Virtualization Group. This career-enhancing position involves designing, deploying, and managing VMware and enterprise infrastructure platforms crucial to our operations at a globally respected financial institution.

Core Responsibilities

• Set up, configure, upgrade, and sustain servers, storage devices, networking, telecommunications equipment in enterprise environments.
• Deploy and manage server OS, database systems, file services, authentication protocols, email servers, backup solutions, and firewalls.
• Conduct regular hardware and platform enhancements to optimize stability, performance, and security.
• Continuously monitor system metrics to detect risks and identify opportunities for optimization.
• Provide second and third line troubleshooting for infrastructure issues, serving as an escalation point for significant incidents.
• Engage in incident management and recovery for critical system outages.
• Design, implement, and maintain VMware infrastructure solutions adhering to corporate standards.
• Oversee and tune existing VMware environments to guarantee high availability and peak performance.
• Diagnose and resolve complex issues involving performance, capacity, and availability in virtualization settings.
• Apply VMware best practices across computing, storage, and networking components.
• Ensure VMware setups comply with security policies, audits, and regulatory requirements.
• Create and update technical documentation, operational workflows, and runbooks.
• Use monitoring and reporting tools to track performance, capacity, availability, and audit access.
• Produce reports covering system uptime, resource usage, storage space, backup performance, and incident patterns.
• Support governance, compliance, and control processes within a regulated framework.
• Collaborate closely with infrastructure, application, security, and operations teams to maintain seamless service integration.
• Communicate effectively with diverse technical and business stakeholders across multiple regions.
• Foster a cooperative team environment while demonstrating leadership and accountability as necessary.

Qualifications and Skills

• Minimum three years of VMware administration and engineering experience in enterprise settings.
• Hands-on knowledge of VMware products including vSphere, vCenter, ESXi, vSAN, virtual networking, and vRealize/Aria Suite (Operations, Automation, Log Insight).
• Fundamental understanding of operating system concepts: CPU, memory, storage I/O, and networking.
• Preferred VMware certifications such as VCA, VCP, or VCAP.
• Familiarity with automation scripting tools including PowerShell, PowerCLI, and Ansible.
• Knowledge of storage technologies like Fibre Channel, SAN, NAS, vSAN, and vVOLS.
• Basic networking principles comprehension.
• Experience with backup and restoration technologies such as ArcServe, NetBackup, Tivoli, Rubrik, Cohesity, and Veeam.
• Understanding of disaster recovery concepts and tools including vSphere Replication, SRM, SRDF, Zerto, and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) vs Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills suitable for engaging technical and non-technical audiences alike.
• Strong organizational abilities with meticulous attention to detail and capacity to manage complex, concurrent projects.
• Ability to effectively prioritize tasks, meet deadlines, and sustain productivity in a fast-moving, regulated environment.
• Self-driven with a commitment to continual skill enhancement and professional growth.
• A collaborative team contributor with demonstrated leadership capabilities and a sense of personal responsibility for delivering outcomes.

Additional Information

Employees operate in a hybrid model which balances remote work and office presence. Candidates must reside within a reasonable commuting distance to the Tralee office. Specific hybrid schedules will be discussed during the interview phase.

SMBC is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities during the recruitment process, in compliance with applicable laws. Requests for accommodations can be directed via email.