Northwestern University Looking for Systems Administrator Senior at Evanston, IL  Full Time

Department: MCC Information Technology
Salary/Grade: ITS/81

Job Summary:

Completes efforts and projects related to the design, installation, operation, support, upgrades and maintenance of infrastructure, including software, servers, networking and storage. Administers, maintains and supports complex and critical infrastructure. Provides user support for server hosting requests, problem resolution, system changes and upgrades. Analyzes infrastructure performance and resolves problems or makes appropriate recommendations. Ensures that all aspects of operability are delivered as part of the implementation process while also ensuring that existing service level is maintained or improved. Contributes to and ensures full compliance to operational standards, procedures and best practices.

Please note: As a primarily systems administration position that involves critical infrastructure support, there will occasionally be times when the occupant of this position will be required to work outside of normal business hours or on weekends in order to complete some time-dependent tasks.

Specific Responsibilities:

Strategic Planning

• Leads planning, development, and coordination of operations and projects for current and future infrastructures.
• Anticipates impact of growth and changes in operations and recommends design and/or process changes.
• Participates in disaster recovery/business continuity planning including backup and recovery procedures and higher availability configurations.

Administration

• Ensures data/media recoverability by implementing a schedule of system backups and database archive operations.
• Serves as project liaison – implementations or upgrades, acts as the focal point for communications between CI (what does this stand for?) and the Project Leader.
• Facilitates coordination and a thorough understanding of requirements, attends project meetings, creates written meeting notes, creates appropriate ticketing, etc.
• Maintains policies and standard procedures to increase system uptime.
• Identifies training needs and keeps current on application technologies.
• Monitors security alerts and ensures that appropriate patches are applied in an automated and timely fashion; works with developers to patch or upgrade custom code for security compliance.
• Documents and maintains system standards; researches and recommends innovative approaches for system administration tasks.
• Creates and maintains standard OS installation images for virtualization templates.

Development

• Monitors application performance on servers.
• Evaluates and manages appropriate software and hardware allocations to achieve an optimum performance level.
• Performs capacity planning for projecting future growth.
• In collaboration with development project teams, builds, rebuilds, and/or updates servers and configures hardware and virtual machines (VM), applications, peripherals, services, networking, storage.

Performance

• Leads troubleshooting of application, operating system(s) server hardware, network communications and storage problems within infrastructure.
• Provides a second level of support; leads service incident and problem resolution efforts to support entrusted applications/products.
• Provides user support on deployed servers.
• Consults on best practices to users.
• Provides data and metrics to support sizing requirements and performance tuning decisions. Participate in related decision processes with managers and leads.

Supervises

• Provides work direction and/or supervises staff such as team members, subordinates, contractors, vendors, students, etc.
• Recommends staff hires/terminations.
• Coaches and mentors staff.
• Manages projects ensuring timelines and deliverables are met and meet expectations.

Miscellaneous

Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

Successful completion of a full 4-year course of study in an accredited college or university leading to a bachelor’s or higher degree in a major such as computer science, information technology, or related; OR appropriate combination of education and experience.

4 years system administration or other relevant experience required.

Infrastructure (extends across applications)

• Apache
• Code Repositories (Git, Subversion)
• GPGPU (CUDA, OpenCL)
• information security
• LDAP
• Linux Operating System
• Monitoring tool (Nagios, zabbix, etc)
• Puppet/Chef/Ansible
• Server hardware
• SQL/MySQL/Postgres
• Storage hardware
• VMware vSphere
• Other: DNS (ISC BIND), ISC DHCPD, SSL Cert manager, SLURM

Programming Languages and Frameworks

• Shell Scripting

Analytical

• critical thinking
• Debugging
• decision making
• enterprise architecture
• judgment
• problem solving
• Troubleshooting

Project

• budgeting
• Code documentation
• collaboration and teamwork
• cost/benefit analysis
• evaluate resources
• facilitate collaboration
• functional documentation
• iterative & incremental development
• organizational skills
• planning

Minimum Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities.)

• Advanced level Linux (RHEL and/or Ubuntu) server and desktop administration, docker management and deployment, DNS & DHCP management, practical virtualization technology, public key encryption, data backups systems, openssl, shell script programming
• Documentation experience for institutional memory and for user & team training
• Good written and oral communication skills
• Experience mentoring junior sysadmin team members
• Ability to quickly and competently acquire and apply new skills as needed
• Experience configuring and managing Linux computing clusters
• Strong foundation in OS hardening and system security best practices

Preferred Qualifications:

• 4 years of senior level server and desktop Linux systems administration experience.

Preferred Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities)

• Professional experience with portainer, kubernetes, HTCondor, Infoblox, Juniper SRX firewalls, CrashPlan Pro (or other) cloud backups system, WebDAV configuration, CertBot, HADOOP, CUDA, LDAP, and python, PHP, perl programming.
• Experience using a ticket management system to track requests a plus.

Target hiring range for this position will be between $96,917 – $136,290 per year. Offered salary will be determined by the applicant’s education, experience, knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

Benefits:
At Northwestern, we are proud to provide meaningful, competitive, high-quality health care plans, retirement benefits, tuition discounts and more! Visit us at to learn more.

Work-Life and Wellness:
Northwestern offers comprehensive programs and services to help you and your family navigate life’s challenges and opportunities, and adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles.
We support flexible work arrangements where possible and programs to help you locate and pay for quality, affordable childcare and senior/adult care. Visit us at to learn more.

Professional Growth & Development:
Northwestern supports employee career development in all circumstances whether your workspace is on campus or at home. If you’re interested in developing your professional potential or continuing your formal education, we offer a variety of tools and resources. Visit us at to learn more.

Northwestern strongly recommends COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters for people who can obtain them as a critical tool for minimizing severe illness. More information can be found on the webpage.

The Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations. We acknowledge and honor the original people of the land upon which Northwestern University stands, and the Native people who remain on this land today.

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer of all protected classes, including veterans and individuals with disabilities. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply. Click for information on EEO is the Law.

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