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The University of the Cumberlands is seeking a Systems Administrator to support, maintain, secure, and improve the University's enterprise technology infrastructure. This position is responsible for physical and virtual servers, virtualization, backup and recovery systems, data center infrastructure, physical access control, Point of Sale systems, patching, and vulnerability management.
The Systems Administrator will work as part of the Infrastructure team to ensure the availability, performance, security, and reliability of systems supporting University academic and administrative operations.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Configure, administer, monitor, and maintain physical and virtual server environments, including VMware infrastructure.
- Deploy, configure, upgrade, patch, and troubleshoot servers, operating systems, applications, firmware, storage, and related infrastructure.
- Administer enterprise backup and recovery systems, including backup monitoring, restoration, and periodic recovery testing.
- Assist with disaster recovery and business continuity planning and testing.
- Support University data center operations, including server hardware, racks, cabling, power, cooling, environmental monitoring, equipment inventories, and lifecycle management.
- Administer and maintain physical access control systems, including servers, applications, controllers, readers, credentials, and associated infrastructure.
- Provision and revoke physical access permissions and coordinate access requirements with appropriate University departments.
- Troubleshoot physical access control hardware, software, connectivity, and system integrations and coordinate with vendors as needed.
- Operate vulnerability scanning and management systems; review findings, prioritize remediation, implement mitigations, and validate corrective actions.
- Assist with system hardening, security audits, compliance activities, and incident response.
- Configure, maintain, and troubleshoot University Point of Sale (POS) systems and supporting infrastructure.
- Coordinate with University departments and third-party vendors to resolve infrastructure, POS, access control, and enterprise system issues.
- Monitor infrastructure for availability, capacity, performance, and security issues and perform root-cause analysis as needed.
- Maintain technical documentation, diagrams, inventories, procedures, and configuration records.
- Participate in scheduled maintenance, infrastructure upgrades, and after-hours response for critical systems as required.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and professional experience.
- Experience administering Windows server environments, virtualization technologies, and physical server hardware.
- Experience with enterprise backup and recovery technologies.
- Understanding of TCP/IP networking, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, firewalls, and related infrastructure technologies.
- Familiarity with system patching, vulnerability management, security hardening, and general cybersecurity practices.
- Strong troubleshooting, analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to document technical systems and procedures clearly and accurately.
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively while managing multiple priorities in a production environment.
Preferred Qualifications
- Three or more years of professional systems administration, infrastructure engineering, or related experience.
- Experience administering VMware vSphere, ESXi, and vCenter in an enterprise environment.
- Experience with enterprise server, storage, backup, and disaster recovery technologies.
- Experience with Microsoft Active Directory, Group Policy, and related Microsoft infrastructure.
- Experience administering enterprise physical access control systems.
- Experience with PowerShell, Bash, Python, or other scripting and automation technologies.
- Experience with vulnerability scanning and remediation tools.
- Familiarity with security frameworks and standards such as NIST, CIS Controls, or CIS Benchmarks.
- Experience supporting enterprise Point of Sale systems.
- Experience in higher education or another complex enterprise IT environment.
- Relevant VMware, Microsoft, Linux, cybersecurity, or infrastructure certifications.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Strong knowledge of server, virtualization, and enterprise infrastructure technologies.
- Knowledge of backup, recovery, disaster recovery, and business continuity concepts.
- Understanding of physical access controls and cybersecurity principles.
- Ability to automate repetitive administrative tasks when appropriate.
- Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate technical information to technical and non-technical personnel.
- Ability to take ownership of assigned systems and projects while working effectively as part of a team.
- Commitment to maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of University information systems.
Physical and Work Requirements
- This is an on-site position at the University of the Cumberlands and is not a remote position.
- Ability to work in office and data center environments.
- Ability to install, remove, rack, and service servers and related IT equipment.
- Ability to lift and move IT equipment as required to perform normal job responsibilities.
- Ability to work occasional evenings or weekends for maintenance, upgrades, and system implementations.
- Ability to respond to critical infrastructure issues outside normal business hours when required.
Professional Expectations
The Systems Administrator is expected to maintain a high degree of professionalism, confidentiality, reliability, and accountability. The position requires sound judgment when administering production systems and physical access to University resources and adherence to established change management, security, documentation, and operational procedures.
The Systems Administrator is expected to maintain and develop technical skills as infrastructure, virtualization, cybersecurity, backup, physical access control, and data center technologies evolve.
Cumberlands is different by design. Our employees exemplify our motto in the pursuit of a
“life-more-abundant.”
