Employment Opportunities
Job Details

Job Description

The System Administrator works with a team to develop, implement, maintain, optimize, and provide technical expertise and guidance for services around IT Automation, Load Balancing, and Application Delivery.

The incumbent, with an automation first mindset, will develop automated processes leveraging Infrastructure/Config as Code principles around new and existing services, that result in greater scalability, adaptability, time to resolution and increased efficiencies.

With a heavy focus on the institution's load balancing and Application Delivery Controllers a successful candidate will leverage and enhance their networking skillset as they work with IT staff across campus to configure network flows for critical IT services. These network flows involve managing configuration for virtual IP addresses, content switching rules, health checks, and backend servers to meet a variety of application availability and resiliency use cases across the university's datacenter infrastructure, both on and off-site.

Additionally, this role will serve as the primary systems administrator for our File Transfer Service, Proxy Services, and other enterprise IT Infrastructure.

This Systems Administrator role will contribute to capacity planning, patching, performance tuning, configuration, security hardening, documentation, and troubleshooting for the services they are responsible for. An individual in this role will leverage traditional monitoring and time series metric aggregation approaches to enhance observability and instrumentation around the health and usage of services the team is responsible for.

This role will assist in continuous improvement and innovation to enhance customer experience and modernization across our information technology infrastructure.

Additional Information
Technology Solutions provides information technology products and services for the administrative and business functions of Illinois State University. Through our Technology Support Center and our highly trained staff, Technology Solutions looks to improve the campus experience for all students, faculty, staff, and the rest of the campus community.

Technology Infrastructure and Research Computing (TIRC) manages the physical server, virtualization, and storage infrastructure for the University along with offering communication and collaboration support in areas such as email, shared storage, and SharePoint. Additionally, TIRC provides networking infrastructure and delivers audio and video communication capabilities to campus.

Position Highlights:

There is the potential for a remote work or a hybrid arrangement in this position, within the state of Illinois. Illinois residency is required. Eligibility is based upon employee performance, appropriate remote working environment, and business needs.
University Benefit Highlights:

Insurance benefits, including health, dental, vision, and life
Retirement and supplemental retirement planning options
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Qualifications

Required Qualifications
Five years of experience which included all of the following:

Five years of progressively more responsible work experience in an Information Technology related profession
- 30 semester hours of college course work which included Information Technology, IT Management, or closely related field substitutes for 12 months
- 60 semester hours of college course work which included Information Technology, IT Management, or closely related field substitutes for 18 months
- 90 semester hours of college course work which included Information Technology, IT Management, or closely related field substitutes for 24 months
- Bachelor's or higher degree equals in Information Technology, IT Management, or closely related field substitutes for 36 months
Four years of work experience with both Windows and Linux systems, including a minimum of 2 years of hands-on Linux server administration.
Two years of work experience with automation tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or Salt.
Two years of work experience with Git-based version control tools such as GitLab, GitHub, or Bitbucket.
Preferred Qualifications
Valid state of Illinois driver's license.
Ability to:
a. accurately define incidents, problems, and events in the trouble ticketing system.
b. develop, update, and/or maintain standard operating procedures (SOPs).
c. operate common network tools (e.g., ping, traceroute, nslookup, wireshark).
d. collaborate effectively with others.
e. function effectively in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
f. autonomously navigate complex technical documentation and leverage modern research tools (including AI and LLMs) to independently synthesize and validate solutions for infrastructure and automation challenges without external guidance.
Knowledge of:
a. cybersecurity and privacy principles.
b. measures or indicators of system performance and availability.
c. server and client operating systems.
d. systems administration concepts.
e. virtualization technologies and virtual machine development and maintenance.
f. operating system command-line tools.
g. network protocols such as TCP/IP, Dynamic Host Configuration, Domain Name System (DNS), and directory services.
h. configuration management
i. directory services. (e.g., Microsoft Active Directory, LDAP, etc.).
Skill in:
a. diagnosing connectivity problems.
b. using virtual machines. (e.g., Microsoft Hyper-V, VMWare vSphere, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, Amazon c EC2 and Azure Virtual Machines, etc.).
c. Ability to create and develop code around automating IT infrastructure and configuration using Automation solutions.
d. interfacing with customers
e. correcting physical and technical problems that impact system/server performance.
f. identifying and anticipating system/server performance, availability, capacity, or configuration problems.
g. recovering failed systems/servers. (e.g., recovery software, failover clusters, replication, etc.).
h. Cloud Compu

Salary

$70,000 - $85,000 annual

Links

ISU Jobs Website

Contact Information

University/Agency	Illinois State University
Department/College	Human Resources
Contact	Kira Shelton
Phone Number	309-438-8311
Address
Comments	Applicants for this position must be authorized to work in the U.S. without ISU sponsorship. Sponsorship for work authorization will not be considered for this position. Please fully complete the entire application including, but not limited to, the education and work history portions. Be specific on your work history, including employment dates (if part-time you must list the number of work hours) and duties for all positions held. Applicable part-time work experience will be considered toward qualifying for this position; however, it will be converted to a full-time equivalency to determine combined length of experience. Please do not put "see resume" in the duties and responsibilities section of the work history. This will be considered an incomplete application and incomplete applications will not be considered. If you are using college or university coursework to qualify for this position, then college or university transcripts (may be unofficial) must be submitted prior to the application deadline to receive full consideration. Transcripts can either be uploaded with your application or submitted via the options listed below. To be eligible for Veteran's Preference points on the exam, appropriate military service documentation such as a DD-214 must be submitted prior to the application deadline. Transcripts and/or military service documentation may be emailed, faxed, or mailed to Human Resources by the application deadline: Email: kgshelt@ilstu.edu Fax: 309.438.0011, Attn: Kira Shelton Address: Illinois State University Human Resources Campus Box 1300 Normal, IL 61790-1300 The Civil Service examination for this classification is based on your application materials and responses to the supplemental questions. No participation other than submission of applicant materials is required from applicants that qualify to take the exam. If you meet the minimum required qualifications for this position, you will receive a score calculated based on your education and experience, and your name will be placed on the active employment register by exam score. After the application deadline, the names within the top three scores will be referred to the department for interview. The active register for this classification will be voided when the position is filled. Illinois State University is authorized to do business within the State of Illinois. All work under this appointment is required to be performed from within the State of Illinois. If hired, out-of-state candidates must establish Illinois residency within 180 calendar days from the start date for this position. Illinois residency requires proof of a valid Illinois driver’s license or a valid State of Illinois ID card. Failure to produce the required documentation within 180 calendar days will result in immediate termination of employment.