Windows Systems Administrator

University Overview

The University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, is a world-renowned leader in education, research, and innovation. This historic, Ivy League school consistently ranks among the top 10 universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report survey. Penn has 12 highly-regarded schools that provide opportunities for undergraduate, graduate and continuing education, all influenced by Penn’s distinctive interdisciplinary approach to scholarship and learning. As an employer Penn has been ranked nationally on many occasions with the most recent award from Forbes who named Penn one of America’s Best Large Employers in 2023.

Penn offers a unique working environment within the city of Philadelphia. The University is situated on a beautiful urban campus, with easy access to a range of educational, cultural, and recreational activities. With its historical significance and landmarks, lively cultural offerings, and wide variety of atmospheres, Philadelphia is the perfect place to call home for work and play.

The University offers a competitive benefits package that includes excellent healthcare and tuition benefits for employees and their families, generous retirement benefits, a wide variety of professional development opportunities, supportive work and family benefits, a wealth of health and wellness programs and resources, and much more.

Posted Job Title

Windows Systems Administrator

Job Profile Title

Systems Administrator C

Job Description Summary

Information Systems & Computing (ISC) is the University of Pennsylvania’s central IT organization, providing the core network, data, voice, video, and enterprise application infrastructure and services upon which Penn’s numerous Schools and Centers build their unique tools and capabilities.

ISC’s 270-plus employees work closely with the University’s IT organizations in order to create, deliver and support products and services that help Schools and Centers operate efficiently and effectively. We strive to be easy to work with, and to serve as a trusted advisor to Penn’s IT community, faculty, staff and students in support of an environment of discovery and progress.

ISC’s focus on customer service and the high-quality, cost-effective, reliable implementation of modern IT solutions advances the mission of the University, as well as that of each individual School and Center. At Penn, technological freedom and departmental autonomy represent dearly held core values. ISC supports those ideas by providing foundational services and cogent counsel, empowering individuals and departments to employ their distinct strengths in support of their goals.

Learn more about us by visiting https://www.isc.upenn.edu/about or www.linkedin.com/company/penn-information-systems-computing/.

The Systems Administrator will be a valued member of the Technology Services Division within ISC. Technology Services provides systems engineering, operations, networking, telecommunications, and collaboration services for use by the global University community through its four teams and through leadership of ISC’s Cloud First Initiative. The Systems Administrator will use their knowledge and skill to deploy, secure, and maintain Azure and on-premises services in support of the university. The services include, but are not limited to, virtual servers, web services, Entra ID, Active Directory, Azure deployments. The position requires exceptional customer service and active listening skills, to gather and understand service requirements.

Job Description

Job Responsibilities

• Meet with clients to define needs and scope of work, gather requirements, and propose solutions.

• Provide technical support of deployed applications defined in the service level agreements with our clients.

• Respond to support requests, and incidents as required and consistent with service level agreements.

• Maintain infrastructure, ensuring security practices are applied, patching is complete, and backups are performed.

• Secure, monitor, support backups, maintain, and patch management of Windows Systems.

• Address performance and availability issues using monitor and logging tools, such as Splunk & Azure Monitoring.

• Support virtual machines and services in Azure and on-prem using modern support methods such as Desired State Configuration.

• Manage users, groups, and device objects in Active Directory and Entra ID.

• Deploy and maintain Group Policy objects in Active Directory.

  Identify emerging security threats and misconfigurations and making recommendations for improvement.

• Continuously improve, through on-going learning opportunities, to help