System Backup Engineer

Experience:

6 years of handson experience with backup and recovery technologies

Purpose of the position:

The Backup Engineer ensures the reliable protection, recovery, and continuity of the companys data by operating, monitoring, and maintaining all backup and restore processes. The role safeguards critical information assets and supports business operations through stable, compliant, and efficient backup services.

Area of responsibility

Tasks in a given area of responsibility

Service Vision & Roadmap:Contribute operational insights to help define and refine the longterm direction of the Backup Service. Provide feedback on recurring issues, system health trends, restore test results, and capacity bottlenecks to support continuous service improvement alongside the Service Owner and Technical Lead.

Operational Task Backlog:Maintain and refine the operational backlog for backup services, ensuring it reflects realworld operational needs. This includes documenting and prioritizing items such as backup job optimization, recurring troubleshooting tasks, restore test planning, capacity expansion needs, and process improvements - always aligned with policies and the Service Owners priorities.

Requirements & Documentation:Translate service and compliance requirements into executable technical tasks, such as configuring retention policies, scheduling backups based on criticality, or enhancing monitoring thresholds. Maintain detailed and uptodate operational documentation, including runbooks, restore procedures, troubleshooting guides, and system configuration documentation to ensure consistent and safe operations.

Stakeholder Interaction:Communicate proactively with stakeholders about backup job performance, restore test outcomes, incident status, and upcoming maintenance activities. Provide clear, technical explanations of issues (e.g., restore failures or capacity risks) and gather feedback to align operations with customer expectations and business priorities.

Budget & Resource Awareness: Provide data and recommendations related to resource consumption - such as backup storage growth, system performance limits, or license utilization. Support the identification of efficiency gains (e.g., deduplication improvements or retention tuning) and contribute operational insights used for planning the service budget.

Capacity Management & Reporting: Continuously monitor backup job performance, system health, and storage capacity. Analyze trends to identify bottlenecks early and support longterm capacity planning. Report on key KPIs, such as success rates, restore validation performance, SLA adherence, and storage utilization, in line with business requirements and stakeholder expectations.

Risk, Compliance & Service Reliability: Ensure all backup and restore operations meet internal security guidelines, retention policies, and audit requirements. Perform regular restore tests to confirm data recoverability and validate compliance. Participate in incident response and rootcause analysis to maintain high service reliability. Support the annual review and adjustment of service scope and policy alignment.

DECISION-MAKING POWERS - FREEDOM OF ACTION

The Backup Engineer supports the Backup & Restore service by executing operational tasks and making technical decisions within their defined responsibility. The role does not set goals, define service direction, or issue instructions to team members. Strategic decisions remain with the Service Owner, Technical Lead, and line management.
The Backup Engineer makes technical decisions necessary for stable daily operations and escalates issues that require architectural, strategic, or crossteam input.

• Monitoring and System Checks:

  Independently monitor supported server systems, backup jobs, and storage health. Make operational decisions to address alerts, warnings, and system deviations within defined procedures.

• Log Analysis & Troubleshooting:

  Perform log analysis and housekeeping tasks. Decide on appropriate troubleshooting actions and execute fixes that fall within approved procedures, runbooks, and security guidelines. Escalate issues that exceed standard operational scope or require crossservice coordination.

• Service Desk / Ticket Execution:

  Process and execute service requests and incidents in the ticketing system. Determine the correct workflow for a ticket (e.g., restore process, backup job adjustments, or escalation). Close tickets once the required operational steps are completed.

• Vulnerability & Patch Operations (Within Approved Policies):

  Apply patches, configuration adjustments, and updates that are already approved by change management or service governance. Identify potential vulnerabilities and propose remediation steps to the Technical Lead or Service Owner. Cannot make unilateral decisions on patch strategy or architectural changes.

• Documentation Responsibilities:

  Maintain accurate and uptodate documentation of environments, workloads, capacities, and operational procedures. Decide when documentation updates are required based on system changes or operational findings.

• Risk Identification:

  Identify operational risks (e.g., storage saturation, recurring job failures, restore inconsistencies). Create risk entries in the risk management process based on observed system conditions. Risk acceptance or mitigation strategy is defined by the Technical Lead or Service Owner.

• Change Execution:

  Execute individual changes they create and submit through the change management process. Ensure that changes are properly documented, tested, and compliant with service policies. Cannot approve changes; they must follow the defined approval workflow.

Experience

• Several years of handson experience with backup and recovery technologies (e.g., Cohesity, Veeam, Commvault, NetBackup).
• Practical experience in operating, monitoring, and troubleshooting backup and restore processes.
• Experience conducting restore tests and supporting disaster recovery procedures.
• Familiarity with working in international IT environments.
• Experience with ticketing systems, incident handling, and operational documentation.
• Basic understanding of capacity planning, monitoring, and performance analysis in backup environments.
• Indepth knowledge and practical experience specifically with Cohesity platforms.
• Experience in optimizing backup workflows, automation, and improving service operations.
• Experience in IT process improvement in a global environment.

Education

• Completed vocational training or studies in computer science, information technology, system integration, or a comparable technical field.
• Certifications in backup technologies (e.g., Cohesity, Veeam, Commvault).
• IT service management certification (e.g., ITIL Foundation).
• Additional certifications related to systems administration, storage, or virtualization (e.g., VMware, Microsoft).

Subject matter expertise

• Solid knowledge of backup and recovery technologies and operational best practices.
• Understanding of basic IT security principles relevant to data protection and backup environments.
• Ability to analyse technical issues, identify root causes, and implement effective solutions.
• Familiarity with IT service management processes (e.g., incident, change, and problem management) according to ITIL.
• Strong team orientation, reliability, and a proactive, selfdriven working style.

Practical skills

• Basic coordination skills to support small operational tasks or miniprojects (e.g. system updates).
• Strong analytical and problemsolving skills for diagnosing backup and restore issues.
• Ability to communicate technical information clearly and effectively to internal customers and colleagues.
• Experience with IT service management tools (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira) for handling incidents, changes, and service requests.
• Knowledge of IT process automation to streamline routine backup operations.
• Customeroriented mindset with attention to service quality and efficiency.
• Ability to support integration of backup systems with storage, virtualization, and infrastructure technologies.