Desktop Support Engineer jobs

Senior Systems Engineer (Tier 3) at TAVANCA

You are reading this because you are tired of being the person who knows what right looks like and working at a place that will not let you build it.

You have told your boss three times that the backup strategy has gaps. You have flagged the firewall rules that nobody has reviewed in two years. You have explained why giving every user local admin is a liability, and the answer was always the same: "The client wants it that way" or "We will get to it" or "Just keep the tickets moving."

So you keep the tickets moving. You fix the same problems that should have been prevented. You clean up after the junior techs because nobody trained them properly. You are the escalation path for everything, the documentation lives in your head, and the day you leave, the company loses half of what it knows.

That is not a career. That is a hostage situation.

If you are done with that, keep reading.

If you are comfortable where you are, stop here. This role is not for people who want comfortable.

Who This Is Actually For

This is for the engineer who walks into a mess and gets excited. Not because they enjoy chaos, but because they can see what it is supposed to look like and they want to be the one who builds it.

We are going to be honest with you. There is cleanup work here. Client environments that need to be standardized. Documentation that needs to be built or rebuilt. Security gaps that need to be closed. Processes that exist in someone's head but have never been written down. This is not a role where you walk into a perfect operation and keep it humming. This is a role where you walk into a real operation that is growing fast and needs a senior engineer who can bring order to it.

If that sounds like a problem, this is not your role. If that sounds like the opportunity you have been waiting for, keep reading.

This is also for someone who wants to lead. Not manage. Lead. You will not be filling out timesheets and doing performance reviews. You will be the technical leader on the team. The person who sets the standard for how work gets done, who coaches the Tier 1 and Tier 2 techs until they stop making the same mistakes, who builds the documentation and the processes that make the whole team stronger. You will lead by making the people around you better at their jobs. That is the kind of leadership that actually matters.

This is not for someone who wants to sit in a corner and admin servers all day. You will talk to clients. You will lead projects. You will be the person in the room who explains why we are doing it this way and makes the client feel confident that their business is protected.

What Makes This Place Different

We run on systems. Not the marketing kind. The kind where every process has an owner, a documented workflow, a measurement, and a review cadence.

That matters for you because it means three things:

• Your recommendations get implemented. When you identify a risk, there is a process for scoping it, scheduling it, and getting it done. You are not shouting into the void. You are presenting a plan, getting approval, and executing it. The systems exist to turn your expertise into action, not to bury it in a backlog.
• The team is built to support you. The Tier 1 and Tier 2 techs are following real processes. They are trained during onboarding, not thrown in and told to figure it out. When something gets escalated to you, it comes with context. But the team also needs you. They need someone who will coach them, raise the bar, and build the documentation and standards that make the whole operation run tighter. That is the leadership piece. You are not just the best technician. You are the person who makes every technician better.
• You are building, not just maintaining. This company is growing. New clients are coming on. The infrastructure, the security standards, and the service delivery model need someone who can think at the architecture level and build things that scale. Some of that means building new. Some of that means cleaning up what exists and making it right. Both are the job and both matter.

What You Will Do

You are the technical ceiling of the service desk and the technical leader of the team. When something is beyond Tier 2, it lands on you. But that is not all you do.

Your week looks like this:

• You handle the hard stuff. Complex network issues, server infrastructure, security incidents, cloud architecture, migrations, and the problems that do not have a knowledge base article because nobody has solved them yet. You work them, you solve them, and then you make sure the solution is documented so the team can handle it next time without you.
• You clean up and standardize client environments. Some environments are in good shape. Some are not. You assess what needs to change, prioritize by risk, build a plan, and execute it. This is where the cleanup work lives and it is some of the most satisfying work you will do. Taking something that is held together by habit and hope and turning it into something solid and documented.
• You own client environments at the architecture level. You know what is in each environment, why it is configured the way it is, and what needs to change. When a client asks "are we secure?" you give them a real answer. You review their security posture, their backup strategy, their network design, and you make recommendations that protect their business.
• You lead projects. New client onboarding, infrastructure upgrades, migrations, security remediation. You scope the work, build the plan, execute it, and hand off the ongoing support to the team with documentation they can actually use.
• You lead the team technically. When a Tier 2 tech escalates to you, you do not just fix it and hand it back. You walk them through the fix. You explain why. You build their skills so they can handle it next time. You set the standard for documentation, for troubleshooting methodology, for how the team communicates with clients. The coaching model is built into the system. This is not something you do in your spare time. It is a core part of the role. A year from now, the measure of your success is not just the problems you solved. It is how much better the team got because you were on it.
• You contribute to how the company operates. You have opinions about how things should be done. Here, those opinions have a place. The weekly team review, the systems improvement process, the technical standards. You are part of building how TAVANCA delivers service, not just delivering it.

What You Need to Have

These are not flexible:

• At least 5 years in a technical role with at least 2 of those in a senior or lead capacity. You have been the person other techs come to when they are stuck.
• Deep experience with Windows Server, Active Directory, Azure/Entra ID, Microsoft 365 administration, networking (VLANs, firewalls, VPNs, DNS, DHCP at a design level, not just troubleshooting level), and backup and disaster recovery. You do not just configure these things. You design them.
• Experience with security frameworks and practices. You understand least privilege, network segmentation, MFA implementation, endpoint protection strategy, and incident response. You have dealt with a real security event and you know what the first three moves are.
• You have worked in an MSP or multi-client environment. You understand the difference between managing one network and managing fifty, and you know how to standardize without losing flexibility.
• You can explain a complex technical decision to a business owner who does not know what a VLAN is and have them walk away confident that you know what you are doing.
• Valid driver's license and clean record. You will visit client sites.
• You can pass a background check.

What will set you apart:

• You have walked into a mess before and turned it into something that works. A client environment, a security standard, a documentation system, a service delivery process. You started with chaos and built something the team could rely on. You have the stories to prove it.
• You have led without a title. You were not the manager but the team came to you anyway. You set the standard by doing the work at a level other people wanted to match.
• You have used AI as a real tool in your workflow. Not as a novelty. You prompt with context, you evaluate the output critically, and you know when it is wrong. You can show us how you use it.
• You have managed a security incident end to end. Not just the technical response. The communication, the client management, the forensics, the post-mortem.
• You have mentored someone and watched them get better because of it. You can tell us who and what happened.

What You Get

Pay: $30-$38/hr depending on what you bring to the table.

Hours: Monday – Friday 9 am to 5 pm

What is not on any other job posting: A company where your technical recommendations actually get implemented. A real leadership role where you make the team stronger, not just carry them. Cleanup work that will challenge you and an environment that gives you the authority to actually fix what you find. Structured onboarding that does not waste your first 90 days. And a growth path that goes somewhere because the company is scaling and needs someone at your level to scale with it.

How to Apply

Same rule as every role here. Do not just click Apply.

Send an email to workwithus@tavanca.ca with the subject line: "Tier 3 - [Your Name]"

Attach your resume as a PDF.

In the body of the email, write two paragraphs:

Paragraph 1: Tell us about something you walked into that was a mess and turned into something that works. Not a ticket you closed. Something you took ownership of, cleaned up, built out, or redesigned. What was the situation, what did you do, and what does it look like now? Be specific.

Paragraph 2: What are you looking for in your next role that you have not been able to find? Be direct. If it is money, say so. If it is the chance to lead without being stuck in management, say so. If it is working at a place that will actually let you fix the things you have been complaining about for years, say that. We are not looking for the polished answer. We are looking for the honest one.

If you send a generic cover letter or skip the two paragraphs, your application will not be reviewed. This is the first process you will encounter with us. How you handle it tells us what we need to know.

TAVANCA is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

Pay: $30.00-$38.00 per hour

Work Location: In person