Senior Systems Administrator (Disaster Recovery Operations)

Peraton•Washington, DC

3d•$112,000 - $179,000

About The Position

We are seeking an experienced Senior Systems Administrator – Backup & Disaster Recovery to design, operate, and continuously enhance the organization’s data protection, backup, and disaster recovery capabilities. This role ensures that critical systems and data can be restored quickly, securely, and reliably in the event of system failures, cyber incidents, or large‑scale disasters. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in enterprise backup platforms, storage technologies, and resiliency engineering.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in information technology or related field, and 8 years of experience. 4 years of additional experience may be substituted in lieu of a degree.
5 years of experience in enterprise backup and disaster recovery operations.
Strong knowledge of backup, replication, and recovery concepts, architecture, and best practices.
Experience with enterprise backup platforms (e.g., Commvault, Veeam, NetBackup).
Understanding of storage technologies (SAN, NAS, snapshots, replication).
DoD 8140 IAT Level II certification (e.g., Security+).
Active TS/SCI clearance.

Nice To Haves

Certifications in modern backup platforms (e.g., Veeam, Commvault).
Storage or infrastructure certifications (e.g., NetApp, VMware).
Experience with virtualization, storage, and cloud platforms (VMware, Hyper‑V, AWS, Azure).

Responsibilities

Lead enterprise backup and disaster recovery operations, ensuring data protection, recoverability, and business continuity across servers, applications, databases, and networked systems.
Administer and optimize backup, replication, and recovery platforms (e.g., Commvault) across on‑premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
Oversee backup schedules, verify data integrity, and manage backup storage capacity and retention.
Ensure backup success, restore validation, and recovery readiness for mission‑critical systems.
Manage disaster recovery planning, testing, and execution, including failover, failback, and recovery exercises.
Conduct regular DR drills, tabletop exercises, and simulations; analyze results and drive improvements.
Lead DR‑related technology projects from requirements gathering through implementation.
Oversee storage‑based protection solutions including SAN/NAS platforms, snapshots, replication, and retention strategies.
Implement security and resiliency controls such as encryption, immutability, air‑gapped backups, and ransomware protection.
Monitor performance, capacity, and compliance; continuously improve RPO/RTO and overall resiliency posture.
Maintain detailed documentation for systems, configurations, DR plans, and operational procedures.
Ensure adherence to organizational policies, regulatory requirements, and audit standards.
Collaborate with infrastructure, security, and application teams to ensure alignment of DR strategies with business needs.