IT Cyber Range Architect III

University Information Technology Services (UITS) is the University of Arizona’s central technology organization. UITS delivers enterprise and specialized technology services that support students, faculty, researchers, staff, and campus partners. Through innovation, strategic partnerships, and a commitment to accessibility and continuous improvement, UITS supports the evolving needs of a leading research university and the communities it serves.

The IT Cyber Range Architect III (IT Architect III) operates and maintains the physical Proxmox cluster, storage systems, and networking infrastructure supporting the University of Arizona's College of Information Science Cybersecurity Learning Environment. This position manages the hardware lifecycle, ensures system availability and performance, maintains security boundaries between student and administrative environments, and coordinates infrastructure improvements with campus IT services. This role focuses on infrastructure operations, virtualization, storage, and networking systems.

This is a hybrid position based at the University of Arizona Tucson Campus and requires on-site work two days per week.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Outstanding U of A benefits include health, dental, and vision insurance plans; life insurance and disability programs; paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays; U of A/ASU/NAU tuition reduction for the employee and qualified family members; retirement plans; access to U of A recreation and cultural activities; and more!

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• Cluster and Infrastructure Administration: Operate and administer the on-prem Proxmox virtualization cluster; administer the Ceph distributed storage system; manage cluster node roles, membership, and health; monitor and optimize resource allocation; maintain KVM/QEMU virtual machines and Linux container environments; troubleshoot infrastructure failures and performance issues; perform capacity planning and resource forecasting.
• Networking and Security Infrastructure: Maintain physical and software-defined networking (Proxmox SDN); configure and manage VLANs and network zones; implement student lane isolation and firewall rules; manage administrative and instructor access controls; configure routing, DNS, DHCP, and NAT; maintain security boundaries and administrative access policies; coordinate with campus network and security teams; conduct security hardening reviews.
• Storage and Backup Operations: Monitor Ceph cluster health and performance; manage storage pools, replication, and quorum; maintain ZFS backup systems and recovery procedures; monitor disk capacity and performance thresholds; optimize storage efficiency and performance; perform recovery operations for infrastructure components; verify backup integrity; manage storage licensing and warranties.
• Maintenance and Updates: Manage hardware lifecycle and warranties; perform operating-system patching and updates on all infrastructure components; maintain base VM and container templates; execute Proxmox and container platform updates; conduct security hardening and vulnerability management; perform routine system maintenance and health checks; coordinate with hardware vendors and support.
• Monitoring, Documentation, and Coordination: Monitor system availability, performance, and alerts; maintain infrastructure documentation and runbooks; coordinate data-center and network dependencies; support automation and infrastructure-as-code implementations; train and supervise student employees on infrastructure tasks; participate in post-incident reviews; maintain change logs and compliance documentation.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Ability to troubleshoot complex Linux infrastructure and virtualization problems.
• Knowledge of infrastructure-as-code automation systems.
• Knowledge of performance optimization and capacity planning.
• Knowledge of security awareness and compliance requirements.
• Knowledge of documentation and knowledge management disciplines.
• Ability to maintain attention to detail and accuracy in infrastructure changes.
• Ability to maintain uptime on aging hardware and make improvements when resources are available.
• Ability to work under pressure during critical incidents.
• Ability to solve problems collaboratively in cross-functional teams.
• Commitment to continuous learning and professional development.
• Knowledge of project management for infrastructure upgrades and changes.
• Knowledge of data-center operations and environmental monitoring.
• Knowledge of TCP/IP networking frameworks.
• Knowledge of backup and recovery procedures and best practices.
• Knowledge of system automation and DevSecOps workflows.

This job posting reflects the general nature and level of work expected of the selected candidate(s). It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties and responsibilities. The institution reserves the right to amend or update this description as organizational priorities and institutional needs evolve.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field, or equivalent advanced learning attained through professional level experience required.
• Minimum of five (5) years of relevant professional experience in infrastructure or systems administration, or equivalent combination of education and work experience.

• Proxmox REST API experience.
• Docker Compose and container orchestration experience.
• Experience with SQL database administration.
• Guacamole remote desktop gateway administration experience.
• Experience with Ansible and Terraform infrastructure-as-code automation.
• Experience with Cloud-init and Packer image creation tools.
• Cybersecurity lab or range platform experience.
• Experience with academic course support and higher-education IT.
• Experience with enterprise domain authentication and access systems.
• Ceph cluster optimization and troubleshooting experience.
• Experience with software-defined networking technologies and implementation.
• Experience with JavaScript and web-application fundamentals for troubleshooting application integration.
• Experience working with faculty, academic research, and instructional systems.
• Enterprise Linux administration experience.
• Relational database administration experience.
• Enterprise type-1 hypervisor administration experience.
• Experience with distributed storage systems.
• Container and containerization experience.
• Hardware troubleshooting, diagnostics, and data-center operations experience.
• Monitoring and logging system implementation experience.
• Security hardening and incident troubleshooting experience.