Department
OPS ITS - Academic Systems Manager
About the Department
ITS collaborates with campus partners to support the mission of the University of Chicago through the consistent delivery of high-quality solutions and services. We provide secure, stable, and reliable infrastructure and applications to support the mission of the University. We support and enable faculty research and teaching with the effective use of technology. We simplify the technology experience for faculty, students, alumni, and staff, and we ensure technology is mobile-friendly and accessible. We identify, manage, and mitigate the technology risks of the University.
Job Summary
The Senior PeopleSoft Campus Solutions Administrator will serve as part of a team that designs, administers, and manages the PeopleSoft application infrastructure in support of the Campus Solutions application, with responsibilities that include improving the effectiveness of application middleware tools and services, supporting PeopleSoft application middleware, and monitoring and effectively managing application performance. Additionally, this role assists application teams in the planning, development, and deployment of business applications, and consistently demonstrates a successful track record of quickly resolving issues and completing requests while maintaining systems in accordance with both service and University of Chicago expectations.
Responsibilities
- Provides strategic leadership and direction for the administration, installation, configuration, and lifecycle management of all PeopleSoft Campus Solutions environments.
- Oversees planning and implementation of all application patches, and upgrades including PeopleTools and PUM images, ensuring enterprise alignment and minimizing downtime across all instances.
- Directs and approves migration strategies for customizations and configuration changes between environments with a focus on risk mitigation and process improvement.
- Leads environment refreshes, database cloning processes, and ensures robust data integrity standards.
- Establishes, manages, and optimizes schedules for on-call and after-hours maintenance, ensuring service continuity and stakeholder satisfaction.
- Develops, enforces, and continuously improves configuration management and automation standards for production, QA, and non-production environments.
- Oversees nightly processing cycles and infrastructure management, ensuring operational excellence within rotational on-call frameworks.
- Champions adherence to ITIL, institutional change management, and governance protocols.
- Initiates and maintains comprehensive system and process documentation, promoting knowledge sharing and audit readiness.
- Owns accountability for the overall health, performance, and high availability of the application portfolio.
- Designs and implements proactive monitoring solutions; analyzes system logs and metrics to predict, troubleshoot, and remediate performance bottlenecks, driving continuous optimization.
- Provides expert tier-3 support and technical guidance to functional and support teams.
- Architects, leads, and interprets application and infrastructure stress tests; manages escalations with third-party vendors and partners.
- Optimizes PeopleSoft application, database, and server configurations, leading efforts to drive operational efficiencies.
- Serves as the primary escalation point and liaison for Oracle technical support, coordinating resolution of complex application performance, configuration, and upgrade challenges.
- Co-leads application security strategy development with the Application Security Administrator; assures compliance with system access, data governance, and security frameworks.
- Oversees cross-functional collaboration for scheduled and emergency support and maintenance activities with internal teams, including application development, infrastructure, database, storage, network, and identity management.
- Leads AIS business continuity and disaster recovery planning, coordinating testing and plan updates in partnership with IT Services and institutional stakeholders.
- Administers operating systems, maintains security, and implements backup procedures for the organization's information systems and peripheral equipment, such as servers, desktops, printers, and storage devices.
- Tracks compliance and maintains documentation for hardware, software, and service inventories for management reports.
- Performs other related work as needed.
Minimum Qualifications
Education:
Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
Work Experience:
Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 5-7 years of work experience in a related job discipline.
Certifications:
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Preferred Qualifications
Education:
- Bachelor’s degree in information technology or related field.
Experience:
- Extensive experience with tools and alternatives for managing and maintaining and troubleshooting application integrations with PeopleSoft.
- Leading application administration for complex enterprise-level business systems, such as student information systems like PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, human resource management systems, payroll systems, financial applications, or other institutional-critical platforms.
- Executing advanced system administration duties, including end-to-end software installation, configuration, system integration, data integrity verification, data reconciliation, patch and upgrade management, and troubleshooting for enterprise applications.
- Managing technical support operations for high-availability applications, ensuring minimal downtime, quick resolution of incidents, and effective escalation handling across teams.
- Developing and documenting administration processes, automating routine tasks, and implementing best practices for scalability, compliance, and business continuity.
- Background working in higher education environments.
Technical Skills or Knowledge:
- Familiarity with the following technologies: Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Tuxedo, Oracle PeopleTools, Oracle database 11g or greater, Integration Broker, Change Assistant, Upgrade Assistant.
- Coordinating and overseeing application lifecycle management activities, such as environment refreshes, database cloning, release planning, and change management in accordance with organizational and ITIL standards.
- Administering web application servers, preferably Oracle WebLogic, including deployment, tuning, security hardening, and troubleshooting in enterprise or academic environments.
- Utilizing server scripting languages such as PowerShell, Perl, CSH, or BASH to automate administrative tasks, system monitoring, log analysis, and process optimization.
- Supporting and managing different server operating systems, Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or other UNIX/Linux environments, ensuring stability, security, and integration with enterprise applications.
- Demonstrated knowledge of IT infrastructure hardware, including hands-on experience configuring and maintaining servers, storage systems, network devices, and backup/restore operations to ensure robust application performance and data availability.
- Collaborating with cross-functional teams to implement infrastructure upgrades, troubleshoot hardware/software integration issues, and contribute to disaster recovery planning and testing initiatives.
- Application Administrator understanding of common technologies used by applications, including backups and event monitoring.
- Understanding of one or more database applications and relational database concepts such as SQL, ORACLE.
- Expertise with writing and reading PL/SQL, SQL, and Unix shell scripts.
- Understanding of the PeopleSoft and Oracle Data Dictionaries.
- Expertise with PeopleSoft application security functionality and best practices.
- Thorough understanding of the PeopleSoft architecture and diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks within the application including troubleshooting/tuning of Process Schedulers, Web Server, App Servers, and working with DBAs for database-related issues.
- Understanding of SQL Optimization techniques for PeopleSoft applications.
Preferred Competencies
- Work independently and in a team environment with good communication and collaboration skills.
- Prioritize and manage multiple systems, requests and deadlines.
- Work with considerable latitude and independence of action.
- Clearly communicate complex technical concepts verbally and in writing to management, technical staff, and customers in terms appropriate for each audience.
- Analyze large amounts of detailed information, perform root cause analysis and quickly assess complex issues.
- Adapt quickly to new technologies and changing business requirements.
- Communicate technical issues to non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong analysis and research skills.
- Strong problem-solving ability.
- Competence in understanding and performing all application administration-related tasks. This would include all tasks related to software installation, patching, and configuration.
- Capacity to lead projects and be the face of the team for new Application implementations.
- Capacity to solve complex issues in a quick and efficient manner that might arise on a variety of technologies.
- Consistently exceeds both time and quality expectations for work related tasks.
- Proactively works to improve application and middleware environment.
- Consistently responds to and resolves user requests within service level expectations.
- Excels at learning new technologies before formal classes and complete documentation are available.
- Create and document standard processes that streamline business tasks.
- Train other staff members in management and support of PeopleSoft Architecture.
- Excellent writing/verbal skills with the ability to communicate and work with a wide variety of technical users.
Working Conditions
- Hybrid office environment.
- Sit for short or extended periods of time.
- Extensively use computer.
- Make repetitive wrist, hand, or finger movements.
Application Documents
- Resume/CV (required)
- Cover Letter (required)
- References Contact Information (required) (3)
The University of Chicago uses AI-assisted tools to streamline and augment some recruitment processes; however, AI is not used to make hiring decisions.
When applying, the document(s) MUST be uploaded via the My Experience page, in the section titled Application Documents of the application.
Job Family
Information Technology
Role Impact
Individual Contributor
Scheduled Weekly Hours
37.5
Drug Test Required
No
Health Screen Required
No
Motor Vehicle Record Inquiry Required
No
Pay Rate Type
Salary
FLSA Status
Exempt
Pay Range
$125,000.00 - $133,000.00
The included pay rate or range represents the University’s good faith estimate of the possible compensation offer for this role at the time of posting.
Benefits Eligible
Yes
The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off. Information about the benefit offerings can be found in the Benefits Guidebook.
Posting Statement
The University of Chicago is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or expression, national or ethnic origin, shared ancestry, age, status as an individual with a disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University's Notice of Nondiscrimination.
Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-5800 or submit a request via Applicant Inquiry Form.
All offers of employment are contingent upon a background check that includes a review of conviction history. A conviction does not automatically preclude University employment. Rather, the University considers conviction information on a case-by-case basis and assesses the nature of the offense, the circumstances surrounding it, the proximity in time of the conviction, and its relevance to the position.
The University of Chicago's Annual Security & Fire Safety Report (Report) provides information about University offices and programs that provide safety support, crime and fire statistics, emergency response and communications plans, and other policies and information. The Report can be accessed online at: http://securityreport.uchicago.edu. Paper copies of the Report are available, upon request, from the University of Chicago Police Department, 850 E. 61st Street, Chicago, IL 60637.
