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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for IT Systems Administrator

💰 $ - $

ITSystems AdministrationNetwork AdministrationInfrastructure

🎯 Role Definition

An IT Systems Administrator is responsible for designing, implementing, maintaining, and optimizing an organization's core server, virtualization, storage, backup, and identity infrastructure. This role ensures high availability, security, and performance of Windows and Linux systems, on-premises and cloud environments (Azure, AWS), while managing change, patching, monitoring, incident response, and vendor relationships. The Systems Administrator acts as a technical lead for infrastructure incidents and projects, automates routine tasks using scripting and configuration management, and partners with security, networking, and application teams to deliver stable, scalable IT services.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Help Desk / Desktop Support Technician
  • Junior Systems Administrator / IT Support Engineer
  • Network Support Technician / Field Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Systems Administrator / Lead Systems Administrator
  • Infrastructure Engineer / Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
  • IT Manager / Head of Infrastructure
  • Systems Architect / Solutions Architect

Lateral Moves:

  • Cloud Engineer / Cloud Operations
  • DevOps Engineer / Build & Release Engineer
  • Security Analyst / Incident Response Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, deploy, and manage Windows Server and Linux environments (including installation, configuration, hardening, patching, and lifecycle management) to ensure high availability and compliance with security best practices.
  • Administer Active Directory domain services, including user and group lifecycle management, GPO design and enforcement, trust relationships, and AD health monitoring to maintain identity and access controls.
  • Architect, administer, and optimize virtualization platforms (VMware vSphere, Hyper-V) including VM provisioning, resource balancing, host patching, and capacity planning to support business continuity and scalability.
  • Implement and manage cloud infrastructure and services (Microsoft Azure, AWS EC2, VPC, IAM, Azure AD) including hybrid identity integrations, migration planning, and cost optimization strategies.
  • Configure, maintain, and troubleshoot core network services such as DNS, DHCP, IPAM, NAT, routing, and load balancing with close coordination with network engineering teams to ensure reliable service delivery.
  • Build and operate centralized backup, replication, and disaster recovery solutions (Veeam, Veritas, Azure Backup, AWS Backup) and perform regular DR testing and restore verification to meet RTO/RPO objectives.
  • Lead server and endpoint patch management processes (WSUS, SCCM/MECM, Intune, Patch Management tools) including patch testing, scheduling, rollback planning, and audit reporting to reduce vulnerabilities.
  • Create, maintain, and enforce security controls across infrastructure: firewall rules, endpoint protection, intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS), vulnerability scanning, and remediations in partnership with cybersecurity teams.
  • Develop and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code, automation scripts, and configuration management (PowerShell, Bash, Ansible, Terraform) to standardize deployments, reduce manual errors, and accelerate provisioning.
  • Monitor system health and performance using enterprise monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix, Datadog, Splunk) and implement alerting and runbooks for incident response.
  • Troubleshoot complex infrastructure incidents end-to-end—perform root cause analysis, implement long-term fixes, and prepare post-incident reports and lessons learned.
  • Manage storage systems and SAN/NAS solutions (NetApp, EMC, S3/Blob storage) including provisioning, performance tuning, snapshots, replication, and lifecycle management.
  • Configure and maintain container platforms and orchestration components (Docker, Kubernetes) where applicable, supporting application teams with deployment patterns and persistence strategies.
  • Maintain configuration and change management artifacts, maintain CMDB updates, and execute planned maintenance windows with clear stakeholder communication and rollback plans.
  • Implement and administer identity and access management (IAM) best practices including MFA, conditional access policies, role-based access control (RBAC), and privileged access management (PAM) integrations.
  • Maintain and optimize centralized logging and SIEM integrations to ensure regulatory compliance, actionable alerts, and forensic readiness for security incidents.
  • Collaborate with application owners, DevOps, QA, and business teams for application deployments, capacity planning, performance tuning, and environment provisioning.
  • Manage vendor relationships, software and hardware lifecycle, purchasing processes, warranties, and escalations to ensure SLA compliance and cost control.
  • Create, review, and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, standard operating procedures (SOPs), network diagrams, and onboarding guides for resilience and knowledge transfer.
  • Participate in IT governance, compliance, and audit activities including evidence collection, remediation tracking, and implementing controls to meet frameworks (ISO, SOC, PCI, HIPAA as relevant).
  • Lead or contribute to infrastructure projects and migrations (data center consolidation, cloud migrations, OS upgrades) including planning, risk assessment, testing, cutover and post-migration validation.
  • Provide escalation support for Level 2/3 incidents, mentor junior administrators, run knowledge-sharing sessions, and contribute to continuous improvement of operational processes.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist in onboarding new hires with infrastructure access and system orientation.
  • Validate and test third-party integrations, APIs, and middleware that interact with core infrastructure.
  • Support cost tracking and tagging strategies for cloud resources to improve chargeback and optimization practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Windows Server administration (2012/2016/2019/2022): installation, Active Directory, GPOs, IIS, event log analysis.
  • Linux administration (Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS): shell scripting, package management, systemd, kernel tuning.
  • Virtualization platforms: VMware vSphere (ESXi/vCenter), Hyper-V; experience with host/cluster management and HA/DR configurations.
  • Cloud platforms: Microsoft Azure and/or AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM, Azure AD, Azure Virtual Machines, S3/Blob storage).
  • Scripting and automation: PowerShell, Bash, Python; experience with automation frameworks and scheduled jobs.
  • Infrastructure-as-Code and configuration management: Terraform, Ansible, ARM templates, CloudFormation.
  • Backup, replication, and disaster recovery tools: Veeam, Veritas, Azure Backup, AWS Backup; DR planning and testing.
  • Patch management and endpoint management: SCCM/MECM, WSUS, Microsoft Intune, third-party patching tools.
  • Networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, routing, switching concepts, VLANs, VPN, load balancers.
  • Monitoring and logging: Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix, Datadog, Splunk, ELK stack; alerting and SLA monitoring.
  • Storage systems and SAN/NAS: NetApp, EMC, iSCSI, NFS, SMB/CIFS, object storage concepts.
  • Security tooling and practices: firewalls, IDS/IPS, endpoint protection (EDR), vulnerability scanning, SIEM integration.
  • Identity and access management: Azure AD, Okta, SAML, OAuth, MFA, RBAC, PAM solutions.
  • Containerization and orchestration basics: Docker, Kubernetes (cluster administration fundamentals).
  • Database service support basics: SQL Server, MySQL administration tasks and backup strategies.
  • Hardware and firmware lifecycle: server hardware, RAID, BIOS/UEFI, firmware upgrades and vendor management.
  • Compliance and audit readiness: evidence collection, control remediation, policy enforcement related to ISO/SOC/PCI/HIPAA.
  • Familiarity with DevOps toolchains, CI/CD pipelines and build automation integration.
  • Enterprise service management and ITIL practices: incident, change, problem, and asset management tooling (ServiceNow, Jira).
  • Experience with remote access technologies, VPNs, and secure remote administration practices.

Soft Skills

  • Strong problem-solving and analytical thinking with a bias for root-cause analysis and permanent remediation.
  • Clear written and verbal communication skills for technical documentation, stakeholder updates, and incident reports.
  • Project management and organizational skills to lead infrastructure projects, migrations, and maintenance windows.
  • Customer-service orientation and ability to work with non-technical stakeholders and application owners.
  • Teamwork and mentorship: ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams and coach junior engineers.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning mindset to keep pace with evolving cloud, security, and automation technologies.
  • Time management and prioritization under on-call and high-severity incident conditions.
  • Attention to detail and commitment to operational excellence, security, and compliance.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Network Engineering, or related field; OR equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related discipline.
  • Professional certifications (preferred): Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator, MCSA/MCSE, Microsoft 365 Certified, AWS Certified SysOps Administrator, VMware VCP, Red Hat RHCE, CompTIA Security+, Cisco CCNA.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Network Engineering
  • Cybersecurity
  • Systems Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of systems administration experience for mid-level roles (2+ years for junior roles, 7+ years for senior/lead roles).

Preferred:

  • 3–5+ years administering enterprise Windows and Linux servers, virtualization platforms, and cloud services.
  • Demonstrated experience in automation (PowerShell/Ansible/Terraform), backup and DR planning, Active Directory design, and enterprise monitoring and security integrations.
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