What are the responsibilities and job description for the IT Operations Engineer position at NCMS – National Center for Manufacturing Sciences?
Location:
This is a hybrid role and requires 3 days in the office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Who We Are:
The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) is a cross-industry technology development consortium, dedicated to improving the competitiveness and strength of the U.S. industrial base. As a member-based organization, it leverages its network of industry, government, and academic partners to develop, demonstrate, and transition innovative technologies efficiently, with less risk and lower cost.
NCMS enables world-class member companies to work effectively with other members on new opportunities – bringing together highly capable companies with providers and end-users who need their innovations and technology solutions. NCMS members benefit from an accelerated progression of idea creation through execution.
Job Purpose:
The IT Operations Engineer is responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning, reliability, and optimization of NCMS’s technical systems and infrastructure. This position combines technical expertise with operational insight into driving system performance, improving processes, and supporting organizational efficiency. The IT Operations Engineer monitors, maintains, and enhances the organization’s IT environment by identifying opportunities for operational improvement and leading continuous improvement initiatives that support business goals and technical excellence.
Primary Responsibilities:
- Monitor, analyze, and maintain critical infrastructure, servers, networks, cloud-based systems, and end-user environments to ensure high availability, reliability, and performance.
- Investigate, diagnose, and resolve operational issues, conduct root-cause analysis and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
- Collaborate with internal teams to identify inefficiencies in operational workflows and implement process improvements that optimize productivity and reduce downtime.
- Develop, deploy, and manage monitoring, alerting, and reporting systems to track performance metrics, detect trends, and inform decision-making.
- Serve as a liaison between technical teams and management to translate operational data into insights and proposals for improvement by aligning infrastructure performance with business goals.
- Maintain and optimize configuration management, system documentation, and standard operating procedures ensuring clarity and operational readiness.
- Participate in incident response, crisis management, and disaster recovery planning to ensure systems can recover quickly and reliably from disruptions.
- Recommend and implement improvements in resource usage, cost efficiency, systems architecture, and operational workflows.
- Support change management and release management processes to ensure operational readiness and manage the impact of changes on the infrastructure.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Requirements:
- Must be a citizen of the United States.
- Must have or be eligible to obtain a government security clearance.
- Must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 unless legally exempt.
- Flexibility to work a hybrid schedule; three days in office & two days home.
- Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 3-6 years of experience in IT operations, systems administration, infrastructure management, or a related field with demonstrable experience supporting complex environments.
- Strong understanding of infrastructure components including servers, networks, virtualization, cloud environments, and end-user systems.
- Proven ability to monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot operational performance issues.
- Demonstrated success of identifying and implementing operational process improvements, automation opportunities, and workflow optimization.
- Proven ability of working across both technical and non-technical stakeholders and translating operational data into actionable insights.
- Strong organizational skills, ability to manage multiple priorities, and a drive for continuous improvement.
NCMS IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER