Job Title: Storage and Backup Administrator
Location: Pune
Experience: 10+ Years
Job Type: Full-time
Department: IT Infrastructure
Key Responsibilities
- Architect and Design Storage Solutions: Lead the planning, design, and implementation of scalable storage infrastructures using NetApp, Rubrik, and other enterprise storage platforms. Collaborate with internal stakeholders to assess business needs and translate them into robust technical designs.
- Backup Strategy: Develop, implement, and maintain comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategies leveraging Rubrik, NetApp Snapshots, and other industry-standard technologies to ensure data integrity and availability.
- Performance Optimization: Monitor, analyze, and optimize the performance, reliability, and throughput of storage environments. Proactively identify bottlenecks and execute tuning initiatives to ensure optimal service levels.
- Capacity Planning and Forecasting: Conduct detailed capacity assessments, forecast future requirements, and manage data lifecycle across primary, secondary, and tertiary storage tiers.
- Data Protection and Compliance: Maintain and enforce policies related to data retention, protection, privacy, and compliance with regulatory frameworks such as GDPR, ISO27001, or equivalent.
- Automation and Scripting: Design and deploy automation frameworks for routine storage operations, utilizing scripting languages such as PowerShell, Python, or Bash to streamline provisioning, backup, and recovery.
- Incident Response and Troubleshooting: Lead the response to escalated incidents relating to data loss, corruption, hardware failures, or performance degradation. Perform root cause analysis and implement corrective measures.
- Documentation and Knowledge Management: Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation, runbooks, and knowledge bases for storage and backup systems. Ensure that processes are clearly defined and accessible to team members.
- Vendor Management and Stakeholder Engagement: Act as primary technical liaison with NetApp, Rubrik, and other key vendors. Evaluate new technologies and manage escalations, upgrades, and support tickets.
- Team Mentorship: Mentor junior team members, conduct knowledge-sharing sessions, and promote skill development across the IT infrastructure team.
- Continuous Improvement: Proactively seek opportunities to enhance storage and backup platforms, streamline workflows, and reduce operational risk.
Required Skills and Experience
- Minimum 10+ years’ experience managing enterprise storage and backup environments
- Expertise in NetApp Technologies
- Hands-on administration, configuration, and optimization of NetApp ONTAP, AFF, FAS, and E-Series platforms.
- Experience with NetApp Snapshots, SnapMirror, SnapVault, and MetroCluster for data protection and disaster recovery.
- Strong understanding of NetApp storage protocols (NFS, CIFS/SMB, iSCSI, FC).
- Capacity planning, quota management, and storage tiering within NetApp environments.
- Upgrading, patching, and integrating NetApp systems with third-party tools and cloud services.
Expertise in Rubrik:
Architecting and deploying Rubrik backup, recovery, and archival solutions.
Experience with Rubrik Polaris, Cloud Data Management (CDM)
Policy-driven backup, instant recovery, and compliance reporting using Rubrik platforms.
Automation of backup workflows utilizing Rubrik APIs and native scripting tools.
Broad Storage Ecosystem Knowledge:
Experience with other enterprise storage arrays such as EMC, Pure Storage, HPE, IBM, or similar.
Understanding of hybrid cloud architectures, SAN/NAS, object storage, and software-defined storage solutions.
Disaster Recovery Planning: Designing and validating recovery point objectives (RPO), recovery time objectives (RTO), and business continuity plans.
Data Lifecycle Management: Implementing archiving, tiering, and purging policies that balance cost, performance, and compliance.
Security Best Practices: Knowledge of encryption, access controls, data masking, and ransomware protection for stored and backed-up data.
Automation and Orchestration: Scripting with PowerShell, Python, Bash, and leveraging orchestration frameworks (e.g., Ansible, Puppet) for infrastructure automation.
Monitoring and Reporting: Familiarity with monitoring tools (e.g., NetApp Active IQ, Rubrik Radar, SolarWinds, Nagios) to ensure service health and compliance.
Project Management: Leading complex migration, upgrade, and integration projects from inception to delivery within defined timelines and budgets.
Strong Communication: Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders, write clear documentation, and present to executive leadership.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field.
- NetApp Certified Data Administrator (NCDA), NetApp Certified Implementation Engineer (NCIE), or equivalent certifications.
- Rubrik Certified Engineer or equivalent certifications.
- ITIL, PMP, or similar project management certifications are highly desirable.
- Experience in working with strict compliance requirements.
Personal Attributes
- Demonstrated initiative, and accountability in high-pressure environments.
- Outstanding analytical and problem-solving skills with a detail-oriented approach.
- Ability to work collaboratively in cross-functional teams and mentor junior engineers.
- Adaptability to emerging technologies and changing business priorities.
- Strong organizational, multitasking, and time management abilities.