Systems Administrator I

Job Description

Job Description Summary

The Systems Administrator I is responsible for the management, maintenance, and optimization of the university’s IT infrastructure, ensuring reliable, secure, and efficient systems to support academic and administrative operations. This role involves administering servers, networks, cloud-based systems, providing technical support, and collaborating with faculty, staff, and students to meet the institution’s technological needs. This is a hybrid position that requires the candidate to commute and be onsite multiple days per week. Full time remote is not an option.

Key Responsibilities:

• System Administration: Manage and maintain on-premises and cloud-based servers (e.g., Windows, Linux, VMware), ensuring high availability, performance, and security.

• System Upgrades & Deployment: Plan and execute system upgrades, software deployments, and migrations to minimize downtime and enhance functionality.

• User Support: Provide tier 2/3 technical support for faculty, staff, and students, by resolving issues related to hardware, software, and system access.

• Vendor Coordination: Liaise with vendors for hardware/software procurement, licensing, and support agreements.

• Network Support: Assist in monitoring and maintaining network infrastructure, including switches, routers, and firewalls to ensure connectivity and security across campus.

• Security & Compliance: Implement and monitor security protocols, patch management, and backups to protect sensitive data and ensure compliance with FERPA, HIPAA, and other regulations.

• Collaboration: Work with academic departments and administrative units to support specialized software, learning management systems (e.g. Brightspace).

• Monitoring & Optimization: Use monitoring tools to proactively identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, ensuring optimal system performance.

• Documentation: Maintain accurate documentation of system configurations, procedures, and troubleshooting guides.

• Disaster Recovery: Develop and test disaster recovery plans to ensure data integrity and system availability in case of outages or cyber incidents.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

Guides work of others who perform essentially the same work. May organize, set priorities, schedule and review work, but has no responsibility to hire, terminate, review performance or make pay decisions.

Collaboration/Services:

• Persuade, gain cooperation and acceptance of ideas or collaborate on significant projects. Exchange detailed information or resolve varied problems.  Identify needs/concerns of others, determine potential solutions, resolve or redirect appropriately.

• Exchange of routine, factual information and/or answering routine questions. Exchange detailed information or resolve varied problems.

Decision Making/Problem Solving:

• Decisions generally affect own job or specific functional area.

• Problems are varied, requiring analysis or interpretation of the situation. Problems are resolved using knowledge, skills, and general precedents and practices.

Essential Functions:

• Maintain infrastructure monitoring systems including network traffic, system availability, backups. Create and update system and network documentation. 15%

• Assist with the introduction and integration of new technologies and services into existing infrastructure and end user environment. Ensure the documentation of said technologies and services is complete and current. Demonstrate creativity to develop supplemental scripts and programs to increase reliability, stability, and expand services. 20%

• Provides as needed support to the network engineer and other team members enabling quality application and service delivery. This position also works closely with various support and consulting vendors maintaining scope of work, deadlines and alignment of strategic initiatives. 15%

• Maintains and updates application servers critical to campus operations. Primary focus on resource allocation, system stability, performance baselining, and log monitoring. Proactively remediates issues as necessary to minimize end user impact and escalating to other staff when appropriate. 30%

• Assist with technical queries and administrative requests from end users by troubleshooting various application and service issues. Provide additional technical assistance to Laptop and Desktop team. Create and provide training to enable Help Desk to resolve frequent issues on first contact. 20%

Minimum Educat