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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Application Server Administrator

💰 $80,000 - $140,000

ITInfrastructureMiddlewareDevOps

🎯 Role Definition

The Application Server Administrator is a middleware infrastructure specialist responsible for installing, configuring, securing, patching, tuning and operating enterprise application server platforms and their integrations. This role ensures application platforms (Apache/Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss/WildFly, GlassFish) are highly available, performant, and compliant with security and configuration standards. The Administrator collaborates with development, QA, network, security and cloud teams to design scalable deployment topologies, automate common tasks, and quickly diagnose and remediate incidents. Strong emphasis is placed on automation (Ansible, Terraform, CI/CD), observability (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk), and cloud-native patterns (Docker, Kubernetes, AWS/Azure/GCP).

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Systems Administrator (Linux / Windows)
  • Application Support Engineer / Middleware Support Analyst
  • DevOps or Build & Release Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Application Server Administrator / Middleware Architect
  • Platform Engineer / Infrastructure Architect
  • Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) / DevOps Lead
  • Application Platform Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Middleware Engineer
  • Platform Operations Engineer
  • Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Install, configure, and maintain enterprise application servers (Apache Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss/WildFly) across development, QA, staging and production environments, ensuring consistency and adherence to architecture standards.
  • Deploy and manage application server clusters, domain topologies and node managers to deliver high availability, load balancing and seamless failover for business-critical applications.
  • Design and implement patch management and upgrade strategies for middleware components (application servers, JVMs, web servers), including testing upgrades in pre-production and coordinating maintenance windows.
  • Perform capacity planning and resource allocation for JVM tuning, thread pools, connection pools and heap sizing to optimize runtime performance and reduce latency for Java-based applications.
  • Troubleshoot application server incidents and outages by performing deep-dive root cause analysis of thread dumps, heap dumps, GC logs, error stack traces, and application logs to identify and remediate underlying platform issues.
  • Implement and maintain end-to-end logging and log aggregation solutions (ELK/Elastic Stack, Splunk, Graylog) to support fast diagnostics and provide actionable metrics for application and platform health.
  • Build and maintain observability and monitoring dashboards (Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic, Dynatrace) to track key performance indicators (CPU, memory, JVM metrics, request/response times, error rates) and trigger automated alerts for SLA breaches.
  • Automate repetitive administration tasks using scripting languages (Bash, Python, PowerShell) and configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef), and maintain version-controlled automation playbooks.
  • Integrate application servers with external services including web servers (Apache HTTPD, NGINX), load balancers, API gateways, LDAP/AD for authentication, and database connection pools (Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL).
  • Design and manage secure connectivity and cryptographic configurations (SSL/TLS, keystore/truststore management), certificate rotation processes, and secure ciphers to maintain compliance with security policies.
  • Enforce and document hardening standards and baseline configurations for middleware platforms in conjunction with security teams and regulatory compliance requirements (PCI, HIPAA, SOC2).
  • Coordinate with development teams and CI/CD engineers to create repeatable, reliable deployment pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps) that support blue/green, canary, and rolling deployment strategies for application servers.
  • Support containerization and orchestration initiatives by packaging application servers and apps into Docker images, and managing deployments on Kubernetes or OpenShift where applicable.
  • Manage JVM and application server memory leaks and performance degradations by analyzing garbage collection, memory allocation patterns and instrumenting code-level metrics when required.
  • Create, maintain and execute disaster recovery and backup plans for middleware configurations, domain exports, and critical artifacts to ensure recoverability and business continuity.
  • Maintain runbooks, operational runbook automation, and runbooks for incident response, including playbooks for restart procedures, cache clears, and failover scenarios.
  • Conduct environment provisioning and configuration for new projects, including setting up domains, datasources, JMS resources, JNDI entries, and security realms in accordance with application requirements.
  • Work with vendor support (Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, etc.) to escalate complex issues, coordinate service requests, and apply vendor-provided fixes and recommended patches.
  • Enforce and implement session management and state management strategies (sticky sessions, distributed caching, session replication) to support scalable web applications.
  • Perform regular health checks, platform audits, and configuration drift assessments, and remediate misconfigurations to maintain platform reliability and compliance.
  • Evaluate and recommend new middleware technologies, tools, and platform improvements to reduce operational overhead, improve performance, and lower total cost of ownership.

Secondary Functions

  • Mentor junior administrators and share best practices on middleware configuration, JVM tuning and troubleshooting techniques to elevate the team’s operational maturity.
  • Participate in change advisory board (CAB) reviews and collaborate on scheduled maintenance windows, ensuring communication and rollback plans are in place for all platform changes.
  • Collaborate with application developers on performance testing, load testing and tuning exercises to achieve target SLAs and improve throughput under expected loads.
  • Contribute to capacity forecasting models and track license usage for application server software and related middleware to support procurement planning.
  • Maintain an inventory of middleware components, OS versions, JVM versions and third-party libraries to proactively manage end-of-life and supportability issues.
  • Lead incident post-mortems and produce actionable remediation plans to prevent recurrence and improve systemic resilience.
  • Create knowledge base articles, runbooks and operational documentation to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) and enable cross-team knowledge sharing.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expertise administering enterprise application servers: Apache Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere Application Server, JBoss EAP / WildFly.
  • Strong system administration on Linux (RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu) and Windows Server platforms, including package management, network configuration and system hardening.
  • JVM tuning and performance optimization experience (heap tuning, GC algorithms, thread profiling, monitoring GC logs).
  • Scripting and automation: Bash, Python, PowerShell, and experience creating Ansible playbooks or using Puppet/Chef for configuration management.
  • Containerization and orchestration: Docker image creation, Kubernetes/OpenShift deployment patterns and knowledge of Helm charts for middleware applications.
  • CI/CD tooling and deployment automation: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps, Bamboo; ability to integrate middleware deployment steps into pipelines.
  • Monitoring and observability: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Splunk, New Relic or Dynatrace for metrics and log analysis.
  • Networking and load balancing: HTTP(S), TCP, TLS/SSL, reverse proxies (Apache HTTPD, NGINX), F5 or cloud-native load balancing.
  • Security and identity integration: SSL/TLS, SAML, OAuth, Kerberos, LDAP, Active Directory integration and keystore management.
  • Database connectivity and troubleshooting: JDBC datasource configuration, connection pooling and basic SQL skills for Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL.
  • Backup, recovery and disaster recovery planning for middleware configurations and domain states.
  • Experience with virtualization and cloud platforms: VMware, AWS, Azure, or GCP — provisioning, monitoring and managing middleware in cloud environments.
  • Log analysis and diagnostic tooling: thread dump analysis, heap dump analysis, jstack, jmap, jstat, and profilers (YourKit, VisualVM).

Soft Skills

  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a methodical approach to root cause analysis.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication to translate technical issues into business impact and to produce clear runbooks and postmortems.
  • Collaborative team player able to work cross-functionally with developers, QA, security, and network engineers.
  • Time management and prioritization skills to manage incidents, projects and ongoing platform improvements under SLA constraints.
  • Customer-focused mindset with ability to balance stability and speed for deployment needs.
  • Continuous learning mindset to stay current on middleware trends, cloud-native patterns and security best practices.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or equivalent technical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in a technical field or relevant certifications (RHCE, Oracle WebLogic Administrator, IBM WebSphere Administrator, Red Hat Certified Engineer, CNCF Kubernetes certifications).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology / Systems
  • Software Engineering
  • Network or Infrastructure Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3 to 7 years of hands-on middleware / application server administration in enterprise production environments.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years supporting large-scale, distributed Java EE / Jakarta EE applications with demonstrated experience in Tomcat, WebLogic or WebSphere.
  • Proven track record of automation, observability, and operating middleware in cloud and containerized environments.
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