Careers at UMass Amherst

About UMass Amherst

The flagship of the Commonwealth, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public land-grant research university that seeks to expand educational access, fuel innovation and creativity, and share and use its knowledge for the common good. Founded in 1863, UMass Amherst sits on nearly 1,450-acres in scenic Western Massachusetts and boasts state-of-the-art facilities for teaching, research, scholarship, and creative activity. The institution advances a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where everyone feels connected and valued—and thrives, and offers a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees across 10 schools and colleges, and 100 undergraduate majors. We believe every member of our university community can contribute to our ongoing success by striving for the highest level of excellence as we seek breakthrough solutions to mounting environmental, social, economic, and technological challenges in our world.

Job Summary

The Lead Web Systems Engineer has primary responsibility to lead the design, implementation, and management of our multi-tier and hybrid web hosting infrastructure as the senior member of the campus web infrastructure team. This role is critical in ensuring the satisfaction of campus web content providers through providing well-performing, secure, and reliable web services across both cloud and on-premises environments. This position requires deep technical expertise in web infrastructure, content delivery networks (CDNs), web security, and Tier 3 support, along with a collaborative spirit to support academic and administrative stakeholders and content providers.

Essential Functions

• Architects, deploys, and maintains scalable web hosting environments across hosted commercial cloud provider services and both cloud and on-premises platforms/infrastructure using Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline techniques in virtual machine and container environments that support essential campus-wide digital services.
• Leads and contributes work on multiple projects as a project leader to research, propose and implement strategies in the Automation, migration, and consolidation of complex distributed systems with both private and public cloud infrastructures including Akami (CDN and Web Application firewall), Acquia (Cloud hosting services), and CampusPress (Blog service), which may entail migrating servers or virtual machines to on-premise or cloud-based environments (e.g., Azure, AWS).
• Serves as a primary point of engagement for external stakeholders and campus-wide users of web platforms, fostering collaborative problem-solving, aligning technical solutions with strategic goals, and delivering responsive, customer-focused support.
• Leads and mentors a team of web applications professionals, providing guidance, support and professional development opportunities. Fosters a collaborative and high-performance culture within the team.
• Manages and optimizes content delivery networks (CDNs) and local caching infrastructure jointly to ensure fast and reliable access to institutional web resources.
• Implements, monitors, analyzes, and routinely updates web security measures in alignment with industry best practices, including web application filtering, encryption, distributed denial of service attack mitigation, and vulnerability management.
• Serves as Tier 3 escalation point for complex web infrastructure issues, ensuring timely resolution and providing root cause analyses. Design and implement improvements to existing processes to prevent issues from resurfacing.
• Collaborates with developers, system administrators, and network engineers to support web applications and services.
• Works with infrastructure staff to manage and maintain relevant domain name system information required by web infrastructure
• Automates infrastructure tasks using scripting and other relevant tools.
• Monitors system performance and availability, promote continuous improvement, and proactive issue resolution.
• Leads the Web infrastructure team to implement process improvements. Document infrastructure designs in accordance with local standards.  Develop and document web service operational procedures and troubleshooting guides.
• Provide consulting to IT and other campus staff on matters related to system provisioning and centralized maintenance and monitoring.

Other Functions

• Performs related duties as assigned or required to meet Department, Executive Area/Division, and University goals and objectives.

Minimum Qualifications (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Education, Experience, Certifications, Licensure)

• High School Diploma (or equivalent) with nine (9) years of relevant experience or an associate's degree with seven (7) years of experience or a Bachelor's degree with five (5) years of experience. 
• Minimum 5 (five) years of experience in web infrastructure engineering or a similar role.
• Lead or supervisory experience.
• Strong knowledge of Linux system administration (RHEL, Ubuntu, or similar).
• Knowledge and experience working with virtualization environments and tools such as VMWare or Nutanix.
• Proficiency in networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, firewalls, VPNs, and load balancers.
• Proficiency with HTTP and HTTPS protocols and troubleshooting
• Experience with DNS management 
• Knowledge of and experience with SSL certificates and Single Sign On.
• Strong understanding of SQL databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and their integration with web platforms.
• Proficient with Apache, PHP, Varnish, and other common elements of web application stacks (LAMP/LEMP)
• Strong scripting skills including Bash, with additional demonstrated scripting and/or automation experience (e.g., Python, Ansible)
• Experience with hosted web service providers, cloud infrastructure and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), and on-premises web infrastructure.
• Experience with Content Management Systems, such as Drupal or WordPress, is required.
• Familiarity with web security protocols and tools (e.g., SSL, WAFs, vulnerability scanners).
• Experience with monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Nagios, Prometheus, ELK stack).

Preferred Qualifications (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Education, Experience, Certifications, Licensure)

• Master’s degree in a related field. 
• Certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect, RHCE, or CISSP.
• Experience in higher education or other complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
• Experience hosting, supporting and maintaining Drupal instances.
• Familiarity with Nutanix-based virtualization and containerization environments as well as native Docker and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with F5 Application Delivery Controllers.
• Experience with Entra ID-based Single Sign On and InCommon-based SSL certificates.
• Use of Ansible, Jenkins, Terraform, and Git in CI/CD pipelines.

Physical Demands/Working Conditions

Typical Office Environment Activity.

Work Schedule

• Monday – Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm.
• Required to work some nights and some weekends as business needs dictate.
• Participate in off-hours on-call rotation.
• This position has the opportunity for a hybrid work schedule, which is defined by the University as an arrangement where an employee’s work is regularly performed at a location other than the campus workspace for a portion of the week. As this position falls within the Professional Staff Union, it is subject to the terms and conditions of the Professional Staff Union collective bargaining agreement.
• This position has the opportunity for a remote work schedule, which is defined by the University as an arrangement where the employee’s work location is to work from a site other than the UMass Amherst campus. As this position falls within the Professional Staff Union, it is subject to the terms and conditions of the Professional Staff Union collective bargaining agreement.

Salary Information

Level 29

PSU Hiring Ranges

Special Instructions to Applicants

Along with the application, please submit a resume, and cover letter. References will be checked at the finalist stage. Please be prepared to provide contact information for three (3) professional references.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst welcomes all qualified applicants and complies with all state and federal anti-discrimination laws.