Summary:
The System Administrator III is responsible for providing advanced enterprise systems administration and operational support for STA’s mission-critical infrastructure environment. This role serves as a senior technical resource responsible for Windows and Linux server administration, Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization, high availability, cloud and hybrid operations, monitoring, backup and recovery, patch management, and service continuity across on-premises and cloud environments.
This position is accountable for reliable daily administration and lifecycle execution of STA's enterprise compute platforms, including standard builds, configuration baselines, Hyper-V cluster operations, capacity planning, operational documentation, recovery readiness, and Tier III incident restoration. The System Administrator III partners with Security, Network Engineering, and operational teams to implement secure, scalable, recoverable, and audit-ready infrastructure services that support STA's clinical, donor, and business operations.
Essential Job Functions and Responsibilities:
Communication
- Collaborate with Security, Network Engineering, Service Desk, IT leadership, and operational teams to support infrastructure initiatives, datacenter operations, hybrid cloud services, and service continuity.
- Provide clear technical communication during incidents, outages, maintenance windows, recovery activities, vulnerability remediation efforts, and post-incident reviews.
- Maintain and publish detailed technical documentation, standard server builds, runbooks, recovery procedures, and operational handoffs.
- Communicate infrastructure risks, capacity concerns, remediation efforts, implementation plans, rollback considerations, and operational updates to leadership and stakeholders.
- Translate complex technical issues involving compute, virtualization, identity dependencies, backup, cloud platforms, and platform services into practical operational communication for non-technical stakeholders.
- Provide incident communications and post-incident reporting that include root cause, restoration actions, lessons learned and recommended corrective actions.
- Participate in cross-department planning discussions related to infrastructure scalability, operational readiness, remote site dependencies, business continuity, and modernization efforts.
Time Management
- Manage enterprise patching schedules, maintenance windows, operational deadlines, system lifecycle activities, host updates, certificate renewals, backup upgrades, and platform changes with minimal disruption to operations.
- Support rotating on-call responsibilities and respond promptly to after-hours incidents, service interruptions, backup failures, monitoring alerts, and infrastructure restoration needs.
- Prioritize infrastructure incidents, operational requests, restore activities, queue work, and project deliverables based on operational risk, service impact, and business urgency.
- Coordinate infrastructure maintenance activities with Security, Network Engineering, Service Desk, and operational stakeholders to align with clinical, donor, and business service requirements.
- Manage patch rings, pre- and post-validation steps, rollback windows, exception handling, and evidence collection in alignment with Security-owned vulnerability priorities and remediation targets.
- Plan and execute routine restore testing, disaster recovery exercises, health checks, capacity reviews, and operational readiness activities on a defined cadence.
- Balance daily administration, modernization work, incident restoration, documentation, and continuous improvement in a 24/7 mission-critical environment.
Attention to Detail
- Administer Windows and Linux server environments supporting mission-critical clinical, donor, and business workloads, including OS upgrades, role and feature management, certificate maintenance, service account coordination, and system hardening aligned to STA standards.
- Administer Microsoft Hyper-V platforms, including host lifecycle, cluster health, failover behavior, live migration, storage and networking dependencies, VM provisioning standards, high availability settings, resiliency configuration, and capacity management.
- Monitor backup job success, retention enforcement, encryption alignment, recovery validation, restore testing results, recovery times, system performance, and operational health metrics.
- Execute infrastructure changes using documented implementation steps, validation criteria, stakeholder communication, rollback plans, and audit-ready evidence.
- Maintain accurate monitoring alignment, alert tuning, dashboard effectiveness, capacity forecasting, vulnerability remediation tracking, patch verification, and operational exception documentation.
- Validate backup integrity, disaster recovery readiness, Hyper-V host recovery, VM recovery, identity dependency recovery, remote site recovery procedures, and operational resiliency standards routinely.
- Reduce configuration drift through standard builds, templates, reusable procedures, scripting, and documented operational controls.
Problem-Solving
- Provide advanced Tier III troubleshooting and root-cause analysis for complex infrastructure issues across compute, virtualization, identity dependencies, cloud services, backup platforms, operating systems, and platform services.
- Identify performance bottlenecks across compute, memory, disk, storage, network, host, and VM layers, and implement proactive tuning and optimization to prevent service degradation.
- Use approved monitoring and operational tools to detect patterns, predict behavior, identify early warning indicators, reduce alert fatigue, and trigger preventive action before incidents occur.
- Develop scalable, supportable, and recoverable infrastructure solutions that improve reliability, resiliency, performance, security posture, and operational efficiency.
- Lead infrastructure recovery efforts during high-impact incidents and outages, including file-level recovery, system-level recovery, VM recovery, Hyper-V host recovery, and coordination of restoration activities.
- Recommend infrastructure redesigns, architecture improvements, virtualization roadmap options, migration approaches, technical validation plans, risk/cost analyses, and operational readiness requirements for the next datacenter stack.
- Evaluate system requirements and translate business and operational needs into secure, supportable technical specifications with defined validation, monitoring, and recovery requirements.
- Automate repetitive operational tasks using PowerShell, scripting, systems management tools, and repeatable procedures to improve consistency, reduce manual intervention, and prevent configuration drift.
Technical Lead
- Provide technical mentorship and knowledge transfer to Service Desk and junior IT staff through published runbooks and operational handoffs.
- Lead operational execution for enterprise systems administration, Microsoft Hyper-V, datacenter virtualization, cloud and hybrid operations, backup and recovery, monitoring, and platform lifecycle activities.
- Support infrastructure modernization and next-stack planning by partnering with IT leadership, Network Engineering, and Security to improve reliability, recoverability, operational efficiency, and audit readiness.
- Promote continuous improvement through automation, operational standardization, process refinement, recovery testing, dashboard improvement, and reusable change/recovery procedures.
Security and Compliance Operations
- Execute vulnerability remediation and infrastructure patching for servers, Hyper-V hosts, endpoints, and cloud systems aligned with Security priorities, risk ratings, and remediation timelines.
- Support audit readiness through operational evidence, configuration documentation, patch verification, exception tracking, recovery testing results, restore documentation, and remediation reporting.
- Partner with the Security team to strengthen infrastructure hardening, secure configuration standards, operational controls, logging alignment, risk mitigation, and compliance readiness across enterprise systems.
- Maintain backup, restore, monitoring, patching, and recovery practices that support business continuity, service resilience, and operational governance.
- Performs other job-related duties as assigned that are consistent with the purpose of the role.
Education, Experience, and Licensing Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or related field required.
- Minimum of five (5) years of progressive systems administration experience required in an enterprise environment, including datacenter operations, Windows Server administration, virtualization, backup and restore, incident restoration, monitoring, and operational documentation.
- Minimum of three (3) years of hands-on experience administering and operating Microsoft Hyper-V in a production environment required, including clustering, high availability, live migration, host lifecycle, resiliency validation, and capacity management.
- A combination of alternative education and experience may be considered in lieu of the formal education requirements.
- Experience supporting enterprise backup and recovery operations, cloud infrastructure, and hybrid systems environments required.
- Strong Windows Server administration experience required, including build standards, troubleshooting, upgrades, certificates, core services, Active Directory, DNS dependencies, and Group Policy impacts.
- Strong monitoring tool usage required for trend analysis, early-warning detection, operational dashboards, alert tuning, and incident response improvement.
- Strong PowerShell scripting skills and automation mindset preferred to reduce manual work, improve consistency, and prevent configuration drift.
- Microsoft Certified: Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate (AZ-800 and AZ-801) preferred or equivalent enterprise administration experience.
- Microsoft Certified: Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate (AZ-800 and AZ-801), Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), or equivalent hands-on experience with Windows Server, Hyper-V, hybrid infrastructure, Azure administration, backup/recovery, and enterprise systems operations.
- Current Driver’s License is required and maintained with an acceptable driving record as defined by STA policy.
Compliance:
- This position is classified as OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens Exposure Category III. The incumbent in this position has no potential for occupational exposure.
- Employees must comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws, accreditation requirements, and organizational policies.
- This role requires compliance with HIPAA and all confidentiality standards related to patient, donor, employee, and organizational information. Employees must safeguard all confidential information and disclose it only as permitted by law and organizational policy.
Other:
Southwest Transplant Alliance maintains a policy of nondiscrimination with employees and applicants for employment. No aspect of employment will be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other basis prohibited by statute. In addition to federal law requirements, STA complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the STA has staff.
Disclaimer:
This job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed. It is not an exhaustive list of responsibilities, duties, or skills required. Job duties may change at any time with or without notice. Nothing in this description constitutes a contract of employment, and employment remains at-will.