APS/PDW Support Engineer - Contract - Remote - initially 5 days - Outside IR35

APS/PDW Support Engineer - Contract - Remote - initially 5 days - Outside IR35 - (RL8213)

My client is looking for an APS/PDW Support Engineer to support on a specialist APS/PDW support engagement, providing health checks, break/fix support and appliance-level expertise within a restricted-access environment.

Role: APS/PDW Support Engineer.
Location: Remote
IR35 Status: Outside
Day Rate: £550
Start Date: ASAP
Duration: initially 5 days

Overview:
We are seeking an experienced APS/PDW Support Engineer to work with one of our long-standing consulting partners on a Microsoft APS (Analytics Platform System)/PDW (Parallel Data Warehouse) requirement.

With Microsoft's support for APS/PDW ending on 31 March 2026, the customer is looking for an experienced consultant who can provide ongoing appliance level support, specifically around the APS/PDW data layer rather than the hardware.

Please note: The successful consultant must have demonstrated experience supporting the current/latest version of Microsoft APS/PDW and be comfortable working within an environment where some activities are performed via customer-facilitated shared access sessions rather than unrestricted administrative access.

Key Responsibilities:

• Initially 5 days of discovery then monthly APS Health Check - approx. 2 hours per month (Estimated total: ~40 hours per year)
• Break/fix support as required (typically a few hours each time, usually following a failed disk identified in the health check)
• This is a support contract, not a BAU role, the client wants a named specialist they can call on when required.

Location/Access:

• Fully remote
• Access will be via the customer's systems (likely VDI)
• Due to security restrictions, direct access to the environment and third-party systems is not available. Work will need to be completed through shared access sessions with a designated customer contact.
• Consultants must be comfortable operating within a controlled access model and coordinating activity with customer stakeholders.
• Hardware failures are already handled by a separate 3rd party hardware provider, this role focuses on the software and APS appliance layer.

Hours/Availability:

• Primarily in hours support
• On call availability may be required for emergencies, but the platform has built in redundancy, so downtime risk is low.

Customer Objective:

• Keep APS/PDW stable and operational post EoS

Provide hands on support with tasks such as:

1. Data redistribution across nodes
2. Rebalancing following a failed drive
3. APS appliance validation & consistency checks
4. Troubleshooting storage fabric/node health issues

• The customer is mid way through a migration to Databricks, but still needs APS support for ~12 months.

Key Skills & Technologies:

• Microsoft APS/APS Appliance Administration
• PDW (Parallel Data Warehouse)
• Recent hands-on experience supporting the latest APS/PDW platform version is essential
• MPP architecture (shared nothing)
• Storage redistribution & node rebalancing
• PDW Appliance Validator/APS health checks
• Windows Server (supporting APS nodes)
• HPE Smart Array storage understanding
• RAID rebuild workflows (awareness-not hardware replacement)
• SQL Data Warehouse internals (PDW)
• Distributed storage fabric/networking awareness
• Experience working within restricted-access environments, including the use of shared sessions and customer-facilitated access models

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