Systems & Infrastructure Lead

The Systems Administrator Lead is a senior, hands-on technical role responsible for the design, implementation, and operation of core infrastructure services across systems, security, firewalls, storage, backup, and container platforms. This role supports both on-premises and cloud environments and plays a critical part in maintaining reliable, secure, and scalable infrastructure for an Animation and VFX production environment. This position emphasizes technical leadership and ownership rather than formal people management. While prior people management experience is beneficial, it is not required. The successful candidate will lead through technical expertise, operational excellence, and collaboration.

Responsibilities

Design, deploy, and maintain Linux and Windows Server environments in production settings; Ensure high availability, performance, and reliability of infrastructure supporting production pipelines; Act as a senior escalation point for complex systems issues and outages; Contribute to infrastructure planning, lifecycle management, and modernization initiatives; Design, manage, and maintain firewall and network security configurations; Implement and enforce security best practices, access controls, and segmentation; Partner with security stakeholders to support compliance, auditing, and client security requirements; Identify and remediate infrastructure security risks; Design and operate enterprise storage solutions (on-prem and cloud-based); Own backup, disaster recovery, and restore processes; Ensure data integrity, availability, and performance for production workloads; Regularly validate backup and recovery procedures; Design, deploy, and operate Kubernetes clusters in on-prem and cloud environments; Support and maintain containerized services used by pipeline, infrastructure, and internal platforms; Implement best practices for container security, networking, scaling, and monitoring; Collaborating with Pipeline and Development teams to optimize container-based workflows; Serve as a technical lead and subject matter expert for systems and infrastructure; Establish standards, documentation, and operational procedures; Mentor and support other Systems Administrators; Collaborate cross-functionally with Pipeline, Security, and Production teams

Requirements

Experience supporting high-performance production, gaming, media, cloud, or enterprise infrastructure; Strong hands-on experience with Linux systems administration; Strong hands-on experience with Windows Server administration; Strong hands-on experience with enterprise storage and backup solutions; Strong hands-on experience with firewall and network security management; Practical experience operating Kubernetes and containerized environments; Experience supporting hybrid infrastructure (on-prem and cloud); Strong troubleshooting, documentation, and operational skills; Ability to manage multiple priorities in a production-driven environment; Experience with VMware vSphere, Horizon, vCenter, Teradici PCoIP; Networking fundamentals - TCP/IP, VLANs, subnetting, DNS, DHCP, routing, firewalls, QoS; Scripting and automation — PowerShell (PowerCLI), Bash, Python; Infrastructure-as-code tools Puppet, Ansible

Nice to have

Previous experience acting as a technical lead or mentor; People management experience (beneficial but not required); Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP); Infrastructure as Code and automation tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible); Experience supporting secure content environments and client delivery requirements

Benefits

Flexible work environment; Extended Health and Wellness from day 1; RRSP matching