Principal Systems Administrator

The Principal Systems Administrator works independently at the highest level on all phases of system administration (i.e. Windows and Linux) to provide highly specialized technical expertise when collaborating, leading and ensuring the successfully delivery of various university applications and services for faculty, staff and students on all campuses of Indiana University. Many of these systems require continuous operation/high availability and 24 × 7 × 365 support.

This position will perform as the highest technical resource for UITS systems which supports mission-critical environments for the university. This position is responsible for all areas of implementation and support including: hardware, operating systems, security, backups, data protection, performance monitoring and tuning, capacity planning, storage allocation, workload management, and problem determination and resolution. This position contributes to the growth and modification of the UITS systems by acquiring and maintaining knowledge of new and emerging applications, tools, and architectures that may be used to support the business operations. This position leads the development and enhancement of current mission-critical environments (including vended solutions and emerging technologies) by interpreting customer needs and applying these decisions to develop and implement system architectural plans, design modifications, and ensures compliance with federal and university policies. This position collaborates, evaluates, recommends and develops “best practices” to keep pace with emerging technologies as it pertains to server systems and computing environments overall.

Effective leadership skills are beneficial for this position. This position will have a highly visible role to communicate and consult and to lead tactical and strategic planning by working with peers in OVPIT, UITS and other university functional units to design robust system environments for the support of core academic mission of the University. The principal systems administrator will have to establish collegial relationships with his/her counterparts in the other areas, balancing advocacy for his/her area with the need to cooperate in the management of extremely complex interrelated systems. This position mentors and coaches other staff within the team.

Combinations of relevant education and experience may be considered.

Knowledge, abilities, and skills: Experience in administration of systems, shared and distributed file systems and database environments. Thorough knowledge of virtualized computer systems, storage systems, backup systems, network systems, network protocol and software interfaces. In depth experience with at least 2 scripting languages, TCP-IP protocols, web servers, transaction processors, LDAP, ACL, load balancing, SSH, network protocols. 

Excellent oral, written and interpersonal communication skills. Customer service attitude and willingness to work as part of a team in a dynamic and complex environment is required. Ability to work with a variety of people with varying degrees of technical knowledge. Ability to assume project leadership for projects and work at the highest level of technical complexity. High levels of accuracy, problem-solving, dependability and responsibility are essential.

Experience in log management platforms, Linux administration is a plus. (EG Splunk) Large institutional multi-tenant platform administration; industry standard certifications.

This position can be located at IUB (Bloomington, Indiana) or IUPUI (Indianapolis, Indiana).