Automation & Security Engineer

This position will maintain and improve our automation tools and overall security, including auditing systems for best practices gaps, improving system monitoring, reducing false positives, and creating scripts in Liongard and N-Able N-Central. The position requires strong auditing skills to find previously undiscovered problems in customer environment monitoring and data collection systems. You will help to improve how Next7 IT audits and maintains customer environments to keep customer environments operating efficiently and securely. Responding to ISP outages, server outages, and network security events will be necessary as these situations occur. Fanatically good documentation, thoroughness, and attention to detail are critical to delivering good outcomes. The activities of this role directly impact the efficiency and capabilities of all other service delivery departments. You must be following procedures exactly, updating them, or creating them. Must have good customer service skills and genuinely enjoy interacting with others. RESPONSIBILITIES: -Perform proactive technical auditing of clients according to our best practices checklist. Each client is checked quarterly. Update documentation while working. Look for ways to improve the process through automation. -Design and implement custom metrics in the Liongard platform needed by the vCIO and the proactive services team. -Design and implement N-Able NCentral systems health monitors. -Design and implement issue remediation scripts to be executed within the N-Able NCentral platform on customer equipment such as servers, workstations, and network equipment. -Review and audit customer environmental health, operational efficiency, and network security design maturity to support more effective and robust design and systems monitoring. -Respond to critical security events discovered and reported within Next7's CrowdStrike EDR solution and Cisco Umbrella. -Identify weaknesses in the above listed, design resolution paths, and receive approval from your direct supervisor to implement improvements in systems monitoring, operational efficiency, and network security practices. -Work directly with the Proactive Service team to improve procedural documentation, customer documentation, and the efficiency of infrastructure maintenance routines. -Implementation of some Next7 IT security best practices, as approved by customers through the standard vCIO process. -Perform vulnerability assessments. -Review and assign inbound tickets to local resources between the hours of 9:30 PM to 3:30 AM -Appropriately respond to alerts including system outages. Involve vendors to remediate when needed and escalate to local resources if needed. -For any alerts that are not actionable, adjust monitoring until all alerts are actionable. -Follow documented start and end-of-day routines.  -Account for all time with detailed notes in our ticket and time management application.  -Follow and update written procedures. Create a procedure if it does not exist. Document work. SKILLS & ABILITIES NEEDED: -Be naturally curious with good troubleshooting skills, continue to ask why until you get to the root cause, and continue to tackle the problem from different angles until a solution is found. You should be comfortable figuring it out independently, even if you have never seen a particular issue before. -Be focused on providing the highest quality customer experience. -Work independently or in teams, manage a full schedule, and seek new tasks with minimal oversight. -Have strong interpersonal English-based communication skills via oral and written means. -Have strong attention to detail and follow through on all work without management follow-up. EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED: -This is an expert-level position for candidates with a bachelor’s degree or relevant experience. -10 years of prior IT support experience in either field service, project management, or network administration positions. -Having prior customer service positions and/or MSP experience is helpful. -Relevant hardware, software, and technology vendor certifications like CompTIA, Fortinet NSE, and Microsoft are a plus. -Scripting skills are required, with a significant emphasis on PowerShell. -Strong understanding of network security design and implementation principles are required. -Active Directory & Microsoft 365 administration skills are required. -Experience with Windows, macOS, and Unix/Linux-based operating systems; cloud-based business-grade applications and productivity platforms. -Have a fundamental understanding of traditional and Azure Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, RAID, Routers, VLAN’s, SSL VPN, IPSEC VPN’s, Group Policy, Azure, AWS, Office 365, SMTP, RDP, and a wide array of data backup software and hardware. HOURS: 4pm-1am EST Monday-Friday; 100% remote