Systems Administrator Lead
About The Position
The Systems Administrator Lead provides leadership, oversight, and direction for the Systems Administration team. The role guides team priorities, ensures successful delivery of infrastructure projects and operational objectives, and serves as a senior technical advisor to the Manager, Systems Engineering. The position aligns infrastructure capabilities with business needs, develops team effectiveness, and drives continuous improvement across on-premises and cloud environments. The role leads infrastructure planning and technical decision-making, oversees operational standards and recovery procedures, guides resolution of complex technical matters, and monitors infrastructure performance and service health. It also leads disaster recovery readiness and testing, coordinates work with IT and business stakeholders, communicates strategy and project status, and drives accountability for team and project outcomes. Travel to retail stores and secondary data center or failover sites is required as needed, including for hands-on troubleshooting, infrastructure rollouts, and annual disaster recovery testing.
Requirements
- High school diploma or equivalent required.
- At least 10 years of experience designing, implementing, and supporting enterprise Windows server environments.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical information to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Valid California Driver’s License and a clean driving record suitable for operating company vehicles and traveling between store locations.
- Expert knowledge of server operating systems, including Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Unix, and related platforms.
- Expert knowledge of Microsoft cloud technologies, including Azure, Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Intune, and related administration tools.
- Expert-level experience with Azure Infrastructure as a Service, including virtual machines, storage, networking, identity, monitoring, and backup and recovery.
- Expert-level experience with Active Directory, Group Policy, Entra ID, Intune, and policy design.
- Expert knowledge of virtualization technologies, including VMware, Hyper-V, or similar enterprise platforms.
- Working knowledge of containerization technologies, including Docker, Kubernetes, or similar platforms.
- Working knowledge of LAN/WAN networking concepts.
- Expert knowledge of SAN storage technologies.
- Expert-level experience with DNS and DHCP administration.
- Advanced experience supporting Exchange Online and on-premises Exchange environments, including mail flow troubleshooting and archiving.
- Experience with disaster recovery and business resumption planning, testing, and support.
- Ability to lead technical initiatives, mentor team members, and coordinate work across infrastructure support teams.
Nice To Haves
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field.
- Experience with AI-enabled technologies and platforms, such as Microsoft Copilot, vLLM, or similar tools.
Responsibilities
- Provide leadership and oversight for the Systems Administration team, establishing priorities, clarifying expectations, and aligning work with department goals.
- Lead infrastructure planning and provide technical direction and recommendations for modernization, resiliency, scalability, and operational improvement.
- Oversee development and maintenance of operational standards, support models, recovery procedures, and knowledge documentation for on-premises and cloud environments.
- Guide resolution of high-impact or complex technical matters by coordinating resources, removing obstacles, and ensuring stakeholder follow-through.
- Monitor infrastructure performance, capacity, availability, and service health trends to identify risks and recommend improvements.
- Champion infrastructure changes that support business objectives while balancing reliability, security, cost effectiveness, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
- Travel to retail store locations as needed for complex hands-on troubleshooting, hardware replacements, and rollouts of new network, server, and POS infrastructure.
- Participate in mandatory annual Disaster Recovery testing, including travel to secondary data center or failover sites to test, validate, and restore critical IT operations.
- Lead coordination of disaster recovery planning, testing, and readiness activities with IT Operations, Applications, Security, and business stakeholders.
- Communicate strategy, project status, risks, and technical recommendations to technical teams, business partners, and leadership.
- Track progress, escalate risks, and ensure timely completion of project delivery, operational commitments, and team objectives.
- Apply analytical, evaluation, and problem-solving skills to guide team decisions, improve infrastructure practices, and support continuous improvement.
- Set automation and tooling strategy and drive adoption across the team.
- Support additional leadership, planning, and strategic initiatives as assigned.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
High school or GED
