The Senior System Administrator leads the administration, maintenance, security, and operational resilience of complex enterprise infrastructure supporting mission-critical systems in a remote federal IT environment. This role provides advanced troubleshooting, capacity planning, configuration management, automation, and patch governance across production Windows, Linux, virtualized, cloud, and hybrid platforms. The Senior System Administrator establishes technical procedures, evaluates system performance and security risks, and guides corrective actions for high-impact incidents while serving as an escalation resource and technical advisor to other administrators.
Key Responsibilities- Engineer, configure, and maintain complex Windows, Linux, virtualized, cloud, and hybrid server environments to meet stringent availability, performance, and security requirements across the client enterprise.
- Lead advanced troubleshooting of system failures, performance degradation, authentication issues, integration problems, and hardware or software interoperability defects, driving rapid restoration of service.
- Design and validate backup, restoration, redundancy, disaster recovery, and continuity procedures for critical infrastructure and data, ensuring reliable recovery and minimal downtime.
- Establish and maintain secure configuration baselines, patching strategies, vulnerability remediation priorities, and privileged-access controls aligned with organizational security and compliance requirements.
- Develop advanced PowerShell, Bash, Python, or comparable automation to support provisioning, compliance validation, monitoring, reporting, and configuration management at scale.
- Analyze logs, performance trends, capacity metrics, and security alerts to anticipate service degradation and recommend infrastructure improvements and optimization actions.
- Lead technical incident response, root-cause analysis, corrective-action planning, and restoration activities for high-priority outages or security events, coordinating across technical teams.
- Review system changes, technical designs, operating procedures, and implementation plans for risk, supportability, security, and recoverability, providing senior technical guidance.
- Mentor junior administrators, coordinate work across technical teams, and serve as a senior escalation point during on-call operations to ensure continuous platform availability.
Required Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
- 7-10 years of progressively responsible experience in systems administration or infrastructure engineering, including advanced work with enterprise Windows, Linux, and virtualized/cloud environments.
- Demonstrated experience administering and securing mission-critical systems in an enterprise or federal IT environment, including backup/recovery, patch management, and configuration management.
- Strong expertise in scripting and automation (e.g., PowerShell, Bash, Python) to streamline provisioning, patching, monitoring, and compliance tasks.
- Proven ability to perform root-cause analysis and resolve complex hardware, software, and networking issues with minimal supervision.
- Must have a current TS/SCI clearance; U.S. citizenship required for the role.
- Experience working in on-call or 24/7 support models for high-availability infrastructures.
Preferred Qualifications- Advanced cybersecurity certification such as CompTIA Security+, CASP+, or equivalent.
- Advanced platform certifications in Microsoft, Linux, virtualization, or major cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure).
- Experience administering infrastructure within classified or highly regulated government environments.
- Prior experience leading technical teams or acting as a senior escalation point for systems and infrastructure operations.
Compensation RangesCompensation ranges for ASM Research positions vary depending on multiple factors; including but not limited to, location, skill set, level of education, certifications, client requirements, contract-specific affordability, government clearance and investigation level, and years of experience. The compensation displayed for this role is a general guideline based on these factors and is unique to each role. Monetary compensation is one component of ASM's overall compensation and benefits package for employees.
EEO RequirementsIt is the policy of ASM that an individual's race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation or national origin are not and will not be considered in any personnel or management decisions. We affirm our commitment to these fundamental policies.
All recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting for all job classifications is done without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, or age. All decisions on employment are made to abide by the principle of equal employment.
Physical Requirements
The physical requirements described in "Knowledge, Skills and Abilities" above are representative of those which must be met by an employee to successfully perform the primary functions of this job. (For example, "light office duties' or "lifting up to 50 pounds" or "some travel" required.) Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with qualifying disabilities, who are otherwise qualified, to perform the primary functions.
DisclaimerThe preceding job description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job.
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