Lead System Administrator

Ardent; Tacoma (WA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Ardent is seeking a Tier 3 System Administrator Lead to support the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This on-site role focuses on the end-to-end integrity of the museum's server ecosystem, including on-prem, virtual, and cloud resources, with 24x7x365 escalation support.

The ideal candidate will lead administration, patching, backups, and disaster recovery, while coordinating with vendors and ensuring secure, compliant operations in a complex IT environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in Linux and Windows server administration and shell scripting.
• Operational integrity across on-premises, virtual, and cloud server environments.
• Advanced troubleshooting across server hardware, OS, virtualization, storage, backup, databases, identity services, and network dependencies.

Responsibilities

• Lead administration, monitoring, maintenance, troubleshooting, and recovery for Windows and Linux servers (physical, virtual, cloud).
• Perform OS patching, storage monitoring, hardware maintenance, backups, SSL certificate renewals, firmware updates, vulnerability remediation.
• Manage VMware ESXi/vCenter, AWS EC2, SQL, MySQL, Oracle, AD, DNS, certificate services within scope.
• Automate repeatable tasks with shell scripting to accelerate diagnosis and recovery.
• Support AWS operations including EC2 lifecycle, S3, Route 53, VPC, Lambda, CloudWatch, IAM.

Skills

Linux server administration

Windows server administration

Shell scripting

VMware ESXi

VMware vCenter

AWS

Active Directory

DNS

Tools

PowerScale

OneFS

Cohesity

Dell Unity

SolarWinds

AWS CloudWatch

Route 53

Job description

Ardent is seeking a Tier 3 System Administrator Lead to join our team.

This is an on-site position in Washington, D.C.

Position Description:

Ardent is seeking a Tier 3 System Administrator Lead to support the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and the technology foundation behind its historically important mission.. Reliable systems, storage, backup, and cloud services are essential to the Museum’s work preserving Holocaust history, supporting education, and serving the public. The Tier 3 System Administrator Lead will be responsible for the end-to-end operational integrity, availability, maintenance, and recovery of the Museum’s server ecosystem. The position supports onsite operations to enable 24x7x365 enterprise escalation requirements.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Lead administration, monitoring, maintenance, troubleshooting, and recovery for physical, virtual, and cloud-based Windows and Linux servers.
• Perform operating system patching, storage-capacity monitoring, hardware maintenance, critical-service restart and validation, backup verification, SSL certificate renewal, firmware and BIOS updates, and directed vulnerability remediation.
• Administer and troubleshoot VMware ESXi and vCenter environments, AWS EC2 and related cloud services, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle, certificate services, and Active Directory infrastructure within the assigned operational scope.
• Use advanced Linux and Windows administration skills, including shell scripting, to automate repeatable support activities and accelerate diagnosis and recovery.
• Support AWS operations including Linux EC2 lifecycle management, S3 administration, Route 53 records, VPC routing, Lambda monitoring, CloudWatch monitoring, and approved IAM execution.
• Deploy physical, virtual, and cloud servers; complete domain joins, IP and DNS registration, security baselines, backup policy association, documentation, and asset tagging.
• Operate backup, restore, and recovery services using Museum-supported platforms, including daily job review, restoration requests, annual disaster recovery exercises, bare-metal recovery, and runbook validation.
• Support storage platforms and services, including PowerScale, OneFS, Cohesity, S3, Glacier, Unity, and associated monitoring, access, capacity, firmware, and recovery activities.
• Provide data center hardware support, vendor RMA coordination, equipment and cable labeling, environmental and rack-capacity monitoring, and approved physical changes.
• Serve as technical lead for third-party hosted applications, vendor updates, secure remote access, certificates, domains, OS patching, and application-tier services such as IIS, Apache, or JBoss.
• Create and maintain accurate implementation, configuration, recovery, change, incident, and operational documentation; coordinate significant changes through Museum change-control processes.
• Provide Tier 3 escalation and after-hours support for incidents affecting critical infrastructure, including data center and AWS services.

Requirements:

• Expertise in Linux and Windows server administration and shell scripting.
• Demonstrated experience maintaining operational integrity across on-premises, virtual, and cloud-based server environments.
• Advanced troubleshooting experience with server hardware, operating systems, virtualization, storage, backup, databases, identity services, and network dependencies.
• Experience with VMware, Microsoft Windows Server, Linux, AWS, Active Directory, DNS, SSL certificates, and enterprise patching and monitoring practices.
• Experience executing backup, restoration, disaster recovery, bare-metal recovery, and hardware failure remediation activities.
• Ability to document technical work, coordinate changes with technical stakeholders, and lead vendor escalation and restoration efforts.
• Ability to support onsite work and participate in 24x7x365 after-hours escalation for critical incidents.

Preferred Qualifications:

• AWS SysOps Administrator-level proficiency or a relevant AWS certification.
• Experience with PowerScale, OneFS, Cohesity, Dell Unity, VMware vCenter, AWS S3 and Glacier, CloudWatch, and SolarWinds.
• Experience supporting SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, IIS, Apache, or JBoss environments.

Due to the nature of the work we support, all candidates in consideration for this role must be willing to undergo the government issued background investigation process.

Ardent is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other basis protected by state, local, or federal law.