Job: Senior System Administrator

Location: Virtual, Arlington, VA, United States 
Deadline: Sunday, 22 September 2013 

Description
OFFICE LOCATION

All United States

ABOUT US

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working to make a positive impact around the world in more than 30 countries, all 50 United States, and your backyard. Founded in 1951, the mission of The Nature Conservancy is to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends. Visit www.nature.org/aboutus to learn more. TNC

POSITION SUMMARY

The Senior System Administrator is part of a small, high-performing team supporting roughly 300 servers and over 4,000 users. Our goal is to ensure that our systems are reliable, secure, and responsive, enabling effective conservation and other business functions for TNC staff, volunteers, and partners. This position has a focus of engineering, implementing, and administering Microsoft based systems.

We prefer a candidate with experience in planning, engineering, and administering the infrastructure for custom or packaged .Net based systems such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Blackbaud Enterprise CRM, Unit 4 Agresso Business World, or any similarly large and complex .Net based systems. This would be someone with a broad skill set who not only has deep knowledge of server infrastructure, networking, and security, but who also is adept at rolling up their sleeves and helping developers design, develop, and troubleshoot .Net-based systems.

We will however consider candidates with planning, engineering and administration experience in core infrastructure systems such Exchange, Active Directory, and / or Citrix, who are interested in continuing to work in those areas but are also interested in assisting with the planning, engineering, and administration of packaged and customized.Net based systems.

In either case, the individual must also be comfortable with assuming an informal technical leadership role in large, complex, systems development projects.

In support of our environmentally-focused mission, we endeavor to run as many of our systems as possible on virtual machines, currently managed via VMware vSphere/ESX. We use F5 load balancers to deliver many of our enterprise-level services and systems. Therefore, any experience in those areas is also beneficial. We are a heterogeneous environment with many Linux and some HP-UX based systems. Although this position's focus is Windows-based systems, experience in Linux and Apache based systems would be beneficial, as it would enable some load balancing of work when other teams could use assistance. This however is not a requirement.

The Senior System Administrator's responsibilities go far beyond the purely technical realm. The individual is expected to have strong initiative and to make significant contributions to the team and organization, identifying areas in need of attention or that can be enhanced, and fulfilling those needs on their own initiative. The position also requires strong analytical and problem solving skills, and the individual must possess a structured, methodical approach to systems administration and engineering. He or she must also be comfortable and effective when assigned projects or tasks in new areas in which he or she has little or no prior experience. TNC

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

Engineering and Project Support

• Proactively plan infrastructure by understanding and anticipating business needs and systems goals.

• Research and propose new software and/or hardware solutions.

• Engineer hardware / storage / system software architectures in support of new systems or system enhancements or upgrades.

• Stay abreast of industry and technology best practices to ensure engineering decisions are based on mature and proven approaches.

• Engineer and test operational processes such as disaster recovery for new systems or system enhancements or upgrades.

• Coordinate with DBA's, Network Engineers, and Desktop Standards staff as needed in engineering and implementation activities.

• Build or oversee builds of Staging and Production environments from the hardware up through the system level.

• Define ongoing maintenance procedures. Research and recommend innovative, and wherever possible automated approaches for system administration tasks.

• Develop operational documentation.

Depending on the experience of the candidate, the duties may also include:

• Collaborate with developers in defining system designs, and participate in formal system design reviews with a focus on technical and operational criteria.

• In conjunction with developers and project management, define migration processes for code or other system changes, and define security model for system access for developers and / or power users involved in delivering system functionality or providing system support.

• Work with Project Technical Leads to establish Development and Test environments.

• Provide informal technical leadership on small to medium sized systems development projects, facilitating effective technical or other decisions within diverse, consensus-based project teams.

• Provide technical / troubleshooting support for developers, especially in regards to issues with potential to impact system stability, performance, or other operational concerns.

Operations and Support

• Perform daily system monitoring, verifying the integrity and availability of all hardware, server resources, enterprise systems and key processes, reviewing system/security logs, and verifying completion of scheduled jobs such as backups. Take action as needed on any issues identified.

• Shared/rotating responsibility for responding to after-hours pager alerts from monitoring systems.

• Provide Tier III/other support per request from various constituencies. Investigate and troubleshoot issues that are enterprise systems-related. Collaborate with developers on deeper .Net or system level issues or issues with interactions between code and the web server or system level configuration.

• Repair and recover from hardware or software failures. Coordinate and communicate with impacted constituencies.

Maintenance

• Support system enhancements or fixes by performing migrations to Staging and Production and working with developers on any issues that arise.

• Perform maintenance or problem remediation activities during Wednesday early morning and / or monthly Saturday maintenance windows.

• Apply OS patches and Service Packs on a regular basis, and upgrade administrative tools and utilities.

• Maintain operational, configuration, or other documentation / procedures.

• Perform periodic performance reporting to support capacity planning.

• Perform ongoing performance tuning, hardware upgrades, and resource optimization as required.

SA Project Management

• Manage small and medium SA / Operational projects. Work with Enterprise Systems Operations Manager to establish project objectives, major milestones, and resources.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor (4-year) degree with a technical major such as engineering or computer science, or demonstrated work experience and proficiency in technical analysis and written technical reports.

• Five years progressively responsible Microsoft system administration experience, with two years within an enterprise-scale environment (at least 1,000 users).

• Experience with network monitoring tools such as netmon and tcpdump in order to perform detailed/highly technical troubleshooting.

• Experience in a technical leadership role, whether formal or informal, within complex systems development projects having staff of diverse levels of experience and areas of responsibility.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

We prefer a candidate with:

• Two or more years of experience engineering and implementing complex .Net-based web application environments, such as SharePoint, ESRI ArcGIS Server, or BlackBaud Enterprise CRM, within an enterprise-scale environment (at least 1,000 users).

• Two or more years experience in operational planning and implementing of customized .Net-based systems. One year experience in change management / configuration management of .Net based systems, in particular migration of code or other changes from Development to Staging / Production environments.

Candidates with this experience may work from any TNC office in the US, given the role will be more focused on systems engineering and planning and less focused on infrastructure and operations.

We will however consider candidates with planning, engineering and administration experience in core infrastructure systems such Exchange, Active Directory, and / or Citrix, who are interested in continuing to work in those areas but are also interested in assisting with the planning, engineering, and administration of packaged and customized.Net based systems. These candidates would be required to work in our Arlington Virginia office where our main data center resides, given this role would be more focused on infrastructure and operations.

We also prefer the candidate possess:

• Experience with OS-level scripting environments (such as PowerShell or bash) and interpreted languages (such as vbscript or perl).

• Experience in system administration of SQL Server, especially to include experience with disaster recovery planning and testing, would be beneficial.

• Because our environment also includes non-Windows servers and systems, must be comfortable working in a heterogeneous environment. Experience in Linux and Apache based systems would be beneficial, but is not required.

WORKING CONDITIONS/PHYSICAL EFFORT

• Responsibilities regularly require working early mornings, evenings, and/or weekends for systems maintenance or problem resolution, sometimes with little advanced notice.

• No regular travel required.

BENEFITS

The Nature Conservancy offers competitive compensation, excellent benefits, flexible work policies and a collaborative work environment. We also provide professional development opportunities and promote from within. As a result, you will find a culture that supports and inspires conservation achievement and personal development, both within the workplace and beyond. TNC

HOW TO APPLY

To apply to position number 40067, submit resume and cover letter as one document. All applications must be submitted in the system prior to 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on September 22, 2013.

Failure to complete all of the required fields may result in your application being disqualified from consideration. The information entered in the education and work experience sections are auto screened by the system based on the basic qualifications of the position.

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• or contact applyhelp@tnc.org. LI-MS1

EOE STATEMENT

The Nature Conservancy is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Women, minorities, veterans and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

The successful applicant must meet the requirements of The Nature Conservancy's background screening process
More Info and Application