Pr. Storage Administrator

Vanderbilt University • Nashville, TN

12h • Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Storage Administrator serves as VUIT's recognized subject matter expert for enterprise storage and backup services across on-premises and cloud environments. Working under minimal supervision, this role independently manages highly complex operational, engineering, and solution delivery challenges involving storage availability, performance, scalability, data protection, and recovery. The Principal Storage Administrator develops and refines operational standards, technical methodologies, and solution designs within the storage domain; leads complex implementations and service improvements; and provides advanced guidance to colleagues and infrastructure teams. The role improves service quality, resilience, operational efficiency, and user experience through expert analysis, engineering, continuous improvement, and resolution of the university's most complex storage and backup challenges.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and directly relevant experience is necessary
• 8-10 years of relevant, progressive experience administering enterprise storage, backup, and data protection platforms in complex environments is necessary
• Deep expertise in SAN, NAS, object storage, replication, backup, recovery, and disaster recovery technologies is necessary
• Advanced ability to analyze and resolve complex storage, performance, availability, and data protection issues across multiple infrastructure domains is necessary
• Experience designing and implementing enterprise storage and data protection solutions within established architectural frameworks is necessary
• Demonstrated experience developing operational standards, automation, support practices, and service improvements that enhance reliability and maintainability is necessary
• Strong communication, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration skills with the ability to influence technical outcomes without formal authority are necessary
• Demonstrated commitment to VUIT’s Guiding Principles is necessary

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field is preferred
• Advanced storage, backup, cloud, or infrastructure certifications are preferred

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead for complex SAN, NAS, object, and cloud-based storage environments, ensuring reliable, scalable, and efficient service delivery.
• Design and implement complex storage, backup, replication, and recovery solutions that align with established architectural standards and operational requirements.
• Lead major storage lifecycle activities, including platform upgrades, migrations, consolidations, refreshes, and service modernization efforts.
• Develop and maintain advanced operational standards, configuration baselines, automation, and support procedures that improve consistency and maintainability.
• Evaluate platform performance and operational practices, implementing improvements that enhance availability, scalability, and service quality.
• Lead investigation and resolution of the most complex storage, performance, replication, backup, and recovery incidents across multiple infrastructure domains.
• Perform advanced root-cause analysis and implement sustainable corrective actions that reduce recurring issues and operational risk.
• Establish monitoring approaches, alerting thresholds, and operational practices that improve proactive issue detection and response effectiveness.
• Drive service reliability improvements through trend analysis, incident reviews, and operational optimization initiatives.
• Provide expert guidance during major incident response and recovery activities to minimize service disruption and business impact.
• Oversee advanced data protection operations, including replication, backup, recovery, retention, and disaster recovery processes aligned with university requirements.
• Improve recovery readiness and resilience through testing, validation, and continuous process enhancement.
• Ensure storage services operate in alignment with university security requirements, data classifications, and applicable regulatory obligations.
• Lead technical analysis and remediation of storage-related security, compliance, and audit findings.
• Develop and promote best practices for data protection, encryption, access management, and operational risk reduction.
• Serve as the primary storage and backup subject matter expert for infrastructure, security, research computing, application, database, and cloud teams.
• Provide mentorship, technical coaching, and knowledge transfer to administrators and engineers to strengthen organizational capabilities.
• Influence technical decisions and implementation approaches through expertise, analysis, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Develop and maintain advanced operational documentation, standards, troubleshooting guidance, and knowledge resources.
• Facilitate effective coordination and communication during complex operational initiatives and cross-functional projects.
• Analyze long-term capacity, utilization, performance, and growth trends to identify operational risks and improvement opportunities.
• Develop reporting and operational metrics that support informed decision-making and service optimization.
• Lead vendor engagement for complex troubleshooting, critical incidents, escalation management, and platform optimization activities.
• Recommend and implement operational improvements based on technology capabilities, performance analysis, and emerging industry practices.
• Coordinate complex migration, consolidation, and decommissioning efforts to ensure reliable service delivery and minimal operational disruption.

Benefits

• Hybrid Work Arrangement: This position is eligible for a hybrid work schedule, combining on‑campus and remote work.
• Rotating on-call duties for after-hours incident response and requests.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Associate degree