Staff Systems Engineer (Infrastructure Automation & Virtualization) - Cadence

Job Title: Staff Systems Engineer Location: Cork or Dublin, Ireland Reports to: Sr IT Architect Job Overview: As a Staff Systems Engineer within our Infrastructure team, you will design, build, and maintain the automation frameworks and virtualization platforms that underpin Cadence's global engineering environment. Your work directly improves the reliability, scalability, and security of critical on-premises and hybrid cloud infrastructure that thousands of engineers depend on every day. This is a hands-on individual contributor role at the intersection of infrastructure automation, cloud integration, and platform engineering - where you will collaborate closely with senior architects while mentoring the next generation of infrastructure engineers. You will join a collaborative, globally distributed Infrastructure team that partners closely with Platform Engineering, Security, and Cloud Architecture stakeholders. The team operates with a GitOps-first mindset and a strong culture of peer review, documentation, and continuous improvement. Primary tooling includes: Terraform, Ansible, Python, GitHub Enterprise, GitHub Actions, Nutanix Prism, VMware vSphere, Prometheus, Grafana, and Datadog. Cloud environments span AWS and Azure. Some flexibility in working hours may be required for collaboration with global teams. Job Responsibilities: - Design and maintain infrastructure-as-code (IaC) solutions using Terraform and Ansible to automate provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management of compute, storage, and networking resources across multi-environment deployments. - Write and maintain Python and Bash automation scripts that reduce manual operational overhead, integrate tooling across the stack, and support CI/CD pipeline functionality. - Build and manage CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions or equivalent tooling to automate infrastructure deployments, enforce policy-as-code, and streamline testing and validation workflows. - Administer and optimise virtualization platforms including Nutanix (AHV, Prism, AOS), KVM, and VMware vSphere/ESXi - ensuring performance, availability, and capacity targets are consistently met. - Support hybrid cloud operations across AWS and/or Azure, integrating on-premises infrastructure with cloud services using automation-first practices and GitOps workflows. - Contribute to infrastructure design discussions, providing well-reasoned input on architecture decisions related to automation, virtualization, HCI, and cloud integration. - Monitor infrastructure health using observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog), respond to incidents, and lead root-cause analysis and remediation efforts. - Develop and maintain clear documentation for automation frameworks, runbooks, and infrastructure standards to ensure operational consistency and effective knowledge sharing. - Participate in security and compliance reviews, applying hardening practices and policy-as-code principles across infrastructure pipelines. - Mentor junior engineers through pair programming, code review, and knowledge transfer - helping grow team capability and reinforce an automation-first culture. Job Qualifications: - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience. - 5–8 years of experience in infrastructure engineering with a strong emphasis on automation and infrastructure-as-code. - Expert-level proficiency in Terraform: writing modular, reusable HCL configurations for multi-environment deployments. - Solid hands-on experience with Ansible for configuration management, idempotent playbook development, and role-based automation. - Proficiency in Python for automation scripting, tooling development, and API integration; Bash scripting for operational tasks. - Production-level experience with at least two of the following virtualization platforms: Nutanix (AHV/Prism/AOS), KVM/QEMU, or VMware vSphere/ESXi. - Familiarity with CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins) and GitOps workflows for infrastructure automation. - Foundational networking knowledge: VLANs, routing, DNS, load balancing, and firewall rules in virtualized environments. - Experience with GitHub or GitHub Enterprise for version control, branching strategies, and pull-request-based workflows. - Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of producing clear technical documentation, runbooks, and architecture diagrams. Additional Skills/Preferences: - Working knowledge of AWS or Azure, including compute, networking, IAM, and hybrid connectivity (VPN, Direct Connect, or ExpressRoute). - Experience with policy-as-code frameworks such as Open Policy Agent (OPA) or Sentinel. - Familiarity with container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, Helm) in infrastructure contexts. - Exposure to infrastructure security tooling and compliance frameworks (CIS Benchmarks, NIST, SOC 2). - Contributions to open-source infrastructure tooling or internal developer platforms.