Systems Engineer III - Storage

Overview

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center is an independent, nonprofit organization providing adult cancer treatment and groundbreaking research focused on cancer and infectious diseases. Based in Seattle, Fred Hutch is the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in Washington. With a track record of global leadership in bone marrow transplantation, HIV/AIDS prevention, immunotherapy, and COVID-19 vaccines, Fred Hutch has earned a reputation as one of the world’s leading cancer, infectious disease, and biomedical research centers. Fred Hutch operates eight clinical care sites that provide medical oncology, infusion, radiation, proton therapy, and related services, and network affiliations with hospitals in five states. Together, our fully integrated research and clinical care teams seek to discover new cures to the world’s deadliest diseases and make life beyond cancer a reality.

Responsibilities

• Technical ownership of a critical 10+ PB data environment that supports scientific and administrative functions.
• Collaborate closely with the Principal Storage Engineer to drive the design, implementation, and operational excellence of Tier-1 storage ecosystems, specifically Dell Isilon/PowerScale, NetApp, and Nimble, as well as data protection platforms like Cohesity and Veeam.
• Drive engineering solutions for scale, utilizing PowerShell or Ansible for automation, and optimize storage performance for virtualization workloads.
• Focus on data governance strategies for unstructured data and capacity planning for multi-year planning.
• Monitor and tune infrastructure systems for optimal performance, control access in compliance with security policies, and create and maintain technical documentation.
• Lead hardware/software evaluations, participate in Design Reviews, and lead and promote departmental processes such as change management, incident management, and problem management.
• Perform system and disaster recovery tests, deliver presentations on technical topics, and inform leadership of systems status.
• Deliver complex planned maintenance after-hours/weekends as required and mentor entry and intermediate level staff.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field desired; or equivalent work experience.
• Seven plus years of system administrator or engineer experience in an enterprise with increasing responsibilities.
• Five plus years of experience supporting two or more server operating systems in a large complex heterogeneous environment.
• Three plus years of experience using Python or PowerShell programming for system administration and automation including Ansible.
• Expertise in one or more of the following: five plus years of experience supporting a complex messaging environment with multiple platforms, anti-spam, and mail routing systems; five plus years of experience supporting an enterprise data protection environment including archiving hundreds of TBs of data; five plus years of experience managing large storage platforms containing PBs of data, working with storage protocols (iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS); five plus years of experience managing a multi-farm SharePoint environment; five plus years of experience building and supporting virtualization technologies.
• Advanced skills with server operating systems, such as Microsoft Server, RHEL, and/or Ubuntu; experience of multiple OSes authenticating to AD; experience with AD architecture and integration with Linux systems, LDAP, and Kerberos; experience administering Linux distribution(s); experience authenticating to AD/LDAP and managing permissions.
• Advanced technical knowledge of current software protocols, and Internet standards; advanced technical knowledge of various RAID configurations and their trade-offs.

Qualifications

• Experience managing storage environments at significant scale (10+ PB), specifically with scale-out NAS platforms like Dell Isilon/PowerScale.
• Deep proficiency with Tier-1 storage ecosystems (NetApp FAS/AFF or HPE Nimble), including advanced usage of management and analytics suites (InsightIQ, SnapCenter, ActiveIQ).
• Experience designing and maintaining backup infrastructures (Cohesity) for large datasets, with a focus on policy-based backups, ransomware protection, and immutability.
• Experience designing, operating, and troubleshooting storage replication and data center resiliency solutions, including cross-site failover, disaster recovery runbooks, and regular testing of recovery procedures.
• Strong understanding of block storage performance requirements (IOPS, latency, throughput) for virtualization platforms.
• Proficiency with PowerShell or Python to automate storage provisioning, reporting, and health checks, with the ability to leverage AI-assisted tooling to streamline and enhance automation workflows.
• Experience extending on-prem storage to public cloud providers (AWS, Azure), using solutions such as NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP or Azure Files.
• Practical experience with unstructured data management, classification, data movement, and auditing workflows (using tools such as Varonis, Globus, Aspera, or native file analytics) to ensure compliance, accessibility, and storage efficiency.
• Experience analyzing data growth trends to forecast capacity needs and plan hardware procurements 12-24 months in advance.
• Ability to troubleshoot complex performance bottlenecks (SMB/NFS latency) using packet capture or wire-data analysis.
• Ability to partner with Principal Architects to translate high-level designs into executable technical plans and architectural diagrams (Visio, Miro, or Draw.io).
• Proficiency with Agile work management tools (Jira/Confluence) and a commitment to maintaining comprehensive operational documentation and runbooks.
• Experience designing and managing tiered storage architectures, including automated data lifecycle policies that migrate infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage tiers within on-premises platforms.
• Strong multi-faceted, analytical troubleshooting and critical thinking skills.
• Strong presentation, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Competent use of desktop applications to include Visio.
• Reliable contributor both individually and as a member of the team.