Systems Administrator

Systems Administrator

About University at Albany:

Established in 1844 and designated a University Center of the State University of New York in 1962, the University at Albany's broad mission of excellence in undergraduate and graduate education, research, and public service engages a diverse student body of more than 17,900 students in nine schools and colleges across three campuses.

Located in Albany, New York, New York State's capital, the University is convenient to Boston, New York City, and the Adirondacks.

Job Description:

Information Technology Services (ITS) at the University at Albany seeks applicants for a Systems Administrator to support the academic, research, and business needs of this R1 institution. The successful candidate plays a key role in the design, maintenance, and development of applications and infrastructure systems to provide secure and robust platforms. The successful candidate is adept at working in physical and virtual environments, and on-premises and cloud-based applications. She/He/They are proficient in assuring the University's infrastructure follows industry standards and best practices and meets regulatory requirements while positioning it to meet the future needs of the evolving campus community.

The Systems Administrator has the technical knowledge and intellectual curiosity to build complex environments for a wide variety of disciplines and departments. She/He/They have keen analytical skills and are driven to solve problems and acquire new knowledge to inform and build a computing environment commensurate with the needs of a public research university.

The Systems Administrator collaborates across ITS, providing input and expertise to a range of services such as email, web, identity and access management, teaching and learning, and research and advanced computing. 

 Primary Responsibilities:

• Provide day-to-day operational ownership for assigned systems including patching, upgrading, configuration management, system backups, continuous monitoring, and performance management. 
• Plan, design, build, implement, and support a growing array of cloud automation tools and services.
• Provide solutions that increase throughput and decrease operational expense for the deployment and operation of systems.
• Maintain subject matter expertise for systems/technologies by staying current with industry trends, following a professional development plan, and regularly sharing knowledge with ITS stakeholders.
• Proactively communicate with Service Owners.
• Contribute to the development of architectural blueprints, templates, and tools for describing our architecture.
• Develop and maintain build/configuration and operational procedures.
• Contribute to short- and long-term technical roadmaps.
• Analyze and design systems to meet assigned project and operational requirements.
• Maintain the security posture in accordance with industry best practice and ITS policies and procedures.
• Participate in developing and maintaining systems standards.
• Act as point of contact and subject matter expert.

 Additional Responsibilities:

• Actively engage in the review/build of complex solutions utilizing new technologies, architectures, or techniques. 
• Collaborate with other systems administrators and architects to ensure that changes align with architectural norms, industry best practices, and ITS standards.
• Be available to provide scheduled support and consultation outside normal business hours, including occasional evenings, holidays, or weekends, within reasonable professional obligation and expectation. 

Requirements:

 Minimum Qualifications:

• A Bachelor's degree from a college or university accredited by a U.S. Department of Education (DOE) or internationally recognized accrediting organization. Five (5) years of relevant experience may be substituted for the degree requirement.
• Proven design, planning, and implementation experience with infrastructure components including servers, storage, network.
• At least three (3) years of experience in systems administration of Linux servers.
• Fluency in one or more scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Python, Perl).
• Applicants must address their ability to work with a culturally diverse population in their application or during the interview.

 Preferred Qualifications:

• At least one (1) year of experience designing, executing, configuring, and troubleshooting high-performance research computing.
• Familiarity with research workload management technologies (e.g., Slurm).
• Cloud certification such as AWS, Azure, or similar.
• Experience in cloud architecture, workload migration, security, and the management of privileged data.
• Understanding of cloud architecture design principles (e.g., design for automation, frequent updates, disaster recovery, fault tolerance and high availability).
• Cloud security background with experience managing privileged data.
• Experience with automated deployment and configuration management solutions (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Terraform).
• Experience with Docker containers and Kubernetes.
• Knowledge of web services (e.g., SOAP, REST and RPC)

Additional Information:

Professional Rank and Salary Range: Senior Programmer/Analyst, SL4

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, or Clery Act, mandates that all Title IV institutions, without exception, prepare, publish and distribute an Annual Security Report. This report consists of two basic parts: disclosure of the University's crime statistics for the past three years; and disclosures regarding the University's current campus security policies. The University at Albany's Annual Security Report is available in portable document format [PDF] by clicking this link http://police.albany.edu/ASR.shtml

Pursuant to NYS Labor Law 194-A, no State entity, as defined by the Law, is permitted to rely on, orally or in writing seek, request, or require in any form, that an applicant for employment provide his or her current wage, or salary history as a condition to be interviewed, or as a condition of continuing to be considered for an offer of employment, until such time as the applicant is extended a conditional offer of employment with compensation, and for the purpose of verifying information, may such requests be made.  If such information has been requested from you before such time, please contact the Governor's Office of Employee Relations at (518) 474-6988 or via email at info@goer.ny.gov.

 THE UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY IS AN EO/AA/IRCA/ADA EMPLOYER

 Please apply online via https://albany.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdetails.jsp?JOBID=149066

Application Instructions:

Applicants MUST submit the following documents:

• Resume
• Cover letter stating all the required minimum qualifications and any of the applicable preferred qualifications
• Contact information for three professional references

 Note: After submitting your resume, the subsequent pages give you instructions for uploading additional documents (i.e. cover letter etc.).