Systems Engineer - AD Migration at hedgehog lab, Remote/Manchester, 2-3 Months initial, £Contract Rate

Job title: Systems Engineer (Active Directory Migration)
Location: UK (Remote-first) | Occasional travel: Manchester
Type: Contract (initially 2-3 month with possible extension).

We are hiring an experienced Systems Engineer to deliver a critical Active Directory migration within an AWS-hosted legacy estate. This work is essential to improving operational resilience and enabling disaster recovery testing across Windows-based services.

You will take ownership of untangling a partially completed AD migration and leading the move to a single, well-managed Active Directory domain within our core AWS platform environment. This role requires strong technical judgement, not just execution.

What you’ll do

• Assess and validate the current AD setup, risks, and dependencies.

• Design the target-state AD architecture and migration approach.

• Build a new consolidated AD environment in AWS.

• Migrate identities and services using a staged approach, preserving SIDs where required.

• Migrate an initial service as a blueprint, then scale across the remaining estate.

• Ensure AD supports reliable backup, recovery, and DR testing.

• Document decisions, risks, and runbooks clearly.

What we’re looking for

Essential

• Strong hands-on experience with Active Directory migrations and consolidation.

• Deep knowledge of Windows Server and AD operations.

• Experience running Windows workloads in AWS (EC2).

• Proven ability to deliver high-risk infrastructure change safely.

Nice to have

• Experience migrating away from AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

• Infrastructure-as-code experience.

• AWS disaster recovery and backup experience.

Ways of working

• Remote-first, with Manchester-based collaboration preferred where useful