Sr. Systems Engineer (IT@JH Enterprise Directory and Messaging)

IT@JH Enterprise Directory and Messaging is seeking a Sr. Systems Engineer who is responsible for administering and maintaining the institution’s enterprise email infrastructure, including the JH Email Gateway (Cisco IronPort), the Sympa ListServ bulkmail distribution service, and the Microsoft Exchange environment. This role supports all users with a Johns Hopkins mailbox—faculty, staff, students, clinical and administrative departments, and affiliated organizations that rely on the enterprise messaging platform. The position works primarily with Windows based systems, with some Linux components, and manages both ticket based and project-based assignments, including security tasks, system maintenance, on-call support, and cross departmental work with groups such as Legal, HR, and IT security. The role operates with a high degree of independence and is expected to provide expert level engineering, troubleshooting, and operational continuity for these mission critical services.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

• The responsibilities listed below are typical examples of the work performed by this position.
• Not all duties assigned to this position are included, nor is it expected that everyone in this position will be assigned every job responsibility.

Systems Analysis/Design (Environment/Platform)

• Design highly complex business, clinical, education, or infrastructure solutions by meeting with customers to observe and understand current processes and the issues related to those processes. Provide written documentation and diagrams of findings to share with the client and other IT colleagues. Assist lower levels to effectively use the system's technical software.
• Design highly complex solutions that conform to institutional policies, standards, and guidelines, and infrastructure environment and to vendor and industry best practices to deliver a quality product.
• Select infrastructure applications that reside between end user applications and hardware operating systems by working with vendors, customers, and other sources (i.e., open source or Internet2 initiatives) to provide configurable tools to the customers.
• Develop new methods to improve service processes, performance, and functionality by examining system management tools and processes. Review new methods suggested by lower levels and approve the work.
• Research, recommend, and implement new technologies based on the value to the institution.
• Works with vendor processes and products to improve the quality and fit for the institution. Typically establishes product mastery and demonstrates initiative for improvements.
• Assign and lead technical systems analysis and design tasks for assigned environments and platforms.

Install & Configure

• Install and configure highly complex server hardware and operating systems by following technical documentation to provide a working product.
• Evaluate, implement, and manage appropriate highly complex software and hardware solutions by using best practices for the environment to ensure system integrity.
• Install and configure infrastructure applications by following product installation and configuration directions and industry best practices to deliver a solution to the customers.
• Ensure an effective schedule is developed of system backups and archive operations by providing leadership, oversight, and direction to technical team in best practices for the environment to ensure data/media recoverability.
• Lead and provide direction to technical team for all above tasks by reviewing work and adherence to institutional standards and guidelines to deliver projects on time and within budget to the customers

Maintain & Troubleshoot

• Provide highly complex server level administration (manage HW/SW, maintenance, upgrades and patches, account maintenance, backups and recoveries and assist users) by following documented procedures to ensure a stable environment.
• Monitor and tune the system by following documentation and procedures to achieve optimum performance levels.
• Develop highly complex scripts and solutions by using departmental standards to automate systems management.
• Perform highly complex system software upgrades including planning and scheduling, testing, and coordination by following documentation and departmental standards to provide a stable product for the environment.
• Audit and maintain user access and authorization by following access and authorization documentation to provide for system security.
• Generate and maintain highly complex periodic and ongoing system specific reports by using appropriate tools to assess system performance, integrity and capacity in order to deliver a stable environment to the users.
• Follow and maintain IT security awareness and best practices by understanding security principles as they pertain to environments supported in order to deliver secure solutions to customers.
• Utilize system management and monitoring tools and incident tracking systems by following documentation and standards to detect incidents, take corrective actions, and determine root cause.
• Monitor changes and resolve any incidents by responding to problems as they occur, by reviewing all processing and output of the newly implemented solution, and by proactively ensuring the solution works successfully to satisfy the customer requirements and to provide a smooth transition to the new solution.
• Lead and provide direction to technical team for all the above tasks by reviewing work and adherence to institutional standards and guidelines to deliver high quality maintenance and troubleshooting to the customers.

Project Collaboration & Lifecycle Participation

• Implement changes by adhering to the change management policies and procedures for any given project to communicate to all parties the nature, significance, and risk factors of the solution.
• Lead effort to develop RFPs by engaging project team members in the process in order to develop well defined requirements to potential vendors for proposed solutions.
• Evaluate vendor proposals by reviewing requirements for the product to select the most appropriate vendor.
• Lead vendors, consultants, and inside Enterprise groups in developing applications by meeting with the team on a regular basis to deliver quality products to customers.
• Lead scheduled project team meetings by attending all meetings to provide input to the project team.
• Author and maintain documentation by writing audience-appropriate materials to serve as technical and/or end user reference.
• Lead technical team in test planning, test scenario construction, and test sessions appropriate to the changes being implemented by following testing guidelines to ensure all delivered solutions work as expected and errors are handled in a meaningful way.
• Review test results and corrections to all changes by following institutional and departmental testing standards to ensure all delivered solutions work as expected and errors are handled in a meaningful way.
• Participate in Institutional and Departmental committees and initiatives.
• Lead and provide direction to technical team for all of the above tasks by reviewing work and adherence to institutional standards and guidelines to ensure collaboration and communication with team members and customers.

In addition to the responsibilities listed above

• This role includes continuous security monitoring of all email related systems for vulnerabilities, exploits, and emerging threats, including review and remediation of relevant CVEs.
• The position is responsible for maintaining and improving Microsoft Secure Score and other security baselines to ensure compliance with institutional standards and industry best practices.
• It also manages email authentication controls such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC; oversees bulkmail governance and high volume message distribution; supports eDiscovery, retention, and mailbox access governance in coordination with Legal, HR, and Compliance; and maintains disaster recovery readiness for all email systems through documentation, testing, and failover validation.
• The role also performs capacity planning, performance optimization, and automation development to ensure reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency across the enterprise messaging environment.

• Bachelor's Degree.
• Six years related experience.
• Additional education may substitute for required experience, and additional related experience may substitute for required education beyond a high school diploma/graduation equivalent, to the extent permitted by the JHU equivalency formula.

• Advanced proficiency in PowerShell and Linux based scripting for automation and system management, along with strong expertise in Microsoft Active Directory, Azure AD, and related identity management technologies.
• Experience with Splunk or similar log analysis platforms is highly valuable for monitoring, threat detection, and operational troubleshooting.
• Additional preferred skills include familiarity with email security standards, vulnerability assessment practices, CVE analysis, and implementing security best practices across enterprise messaging systems.

Classified Title: Sr. Systems Engineer 
Role/Level/Range: ATP/04/PF  
Starting Salary Range: $85,500 - $149,800 Annually (Commensurate with exp.) 
Employee group: Full Time 
Schedule: Mon-Fri 8:30-5:00 
FLSA Status: Exempt 
Location: Remote 
Department name: IT@JH Enterprise Directory and Messaging   
Personnel area: University Administration