Virtualization and Systems Administrator

Organizational Context

The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), part of the UN Secretariat, operates under the UN Economic and Social Council. Located in the Decision-Support and Data Science Division (DSDSD), this role supports modernization and innovation efforts. DSDSD provides advanced analytics, secure digital platforms, and decision-support services, leveraging enterprise virtualization and scalable technology frameworks for high availability and security.

Job Purpose

The Virtualization and Systems Administrator will support the development, virtualization, maintenance, and optimization of core infrastructure systems and architectures to deliver strategic initiatives. This role is crucial for ensuring the high availability, security, and performance of critical digital assets within ESCWA. The administrator will manage virtualization clusters, storage, container orchestration, and on-premises applications, contributing to reliable digital decision-support tools that empower evidence-based decision-making and enhance organizational efficiency across the region. The position is within the Decision-Support and Data Science Division, aligning with the UN 2.0 agenda and operational resilience.

Responsibilities

Administer and maintain Proxmox virtualization clusters for production and development workloads, including VM provisioning, snapshots, backups, and lifecycle management. Configure high availability (HA) and failover mechanisms for critical applications. Perform cluster monitoring, capacity planning, and resource optimization for compute and storage nodes. Manage virtual networking, VLANs, and inter-VM connectivity. Monitor cluster health and performance, diagnosing and resolving virtualization, storage, and networking issues. Tune VM resource allocations for improved performance and efficiency. Conduct regular maintenance, upgrades, and security patching of Proxmox nodes. Administer Kubernetes clusters for deployment, scaling, monitoring, and troubleshooting of containerized applications. Manage storage volume tasks, including introducing, configuring, and masking new LUNs. Optimize storage paths and performance partitioning. Provide operational support for on-premises hosted applications, debugging issues and managing containerized application stacks.

Work Experience

Minimum of 6 years of professional experience in designing and deploying data systems, data center virtualization, and infrastructure management, with demonstrated consultancy or technical leadership roles. Experience with cloud environments (Azure, AWS, GCP), container orchestration (Kubernetes), Proxmox VE, VM provisioning, HA, and network configuration is required. Experience in SAN administration and troubleshooting on-premises applications is also required. Familiarity with legacy system migration and disaster recovery is desirable.

Skills

Proxmox VE administration, VM provisioning, High Availability (HA), cluster monitoring, resource optimization, virtual networking, Kubernetes administration, container orchestration, storage volume management, SAN administration, on-premises application support, legacy system migration, infrastructure modernization, disaster recovery, analytical skills, problem-solving skills, communication skills.

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