Systems Engineer Senior

Northwestern University; Evanston (IL); On-site; USD 112,000 - 142,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Tuition benefits

Wellness programs

Retirement savings options

Paid vacation and holidays

Job summary

Northwestern University in Evanston is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to design, install, operate, and maintain complex infrastructure, including servers, networking, and storage. You will provide escalated user support for server engineers, analyze performance, and ensure security, uptime, and compliance with standards.

The role involves planning current and future infrastructure, disaster recovery planning, backup operations, and coordinating with project leaders.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 4 years of system administration experience.

Responsibilities

• Leads planning, development, and coordination of operations and projects for current and future infrastructures.
• Participates in disaster recovery and business continuity planning, including backup, recovery procedures, and high availability configurations.
• Provides second-level support, leading incident resolution efforts and advising on best practices for deployed systems.
• Creates and maintains standard OS installation images for virtualization templates to support consistent deployment.
• Monitors application performance on servers and optimizes software and hardware allocations for peak efficiency.
• Leads troubleshooting for applications, operating systems, server hardware, network communications, and storage infrastructure.

Skills

System administration

Leadership

Incident management

Customer support

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Department: IT Cyber Platform Services

Salary/Grade: ITS/82

Target hiring range for this position will be between $111,800-142,000 per year. Offered salary will be determined by the applicant's education, experience, knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

Job Summary:

Completes complex efforts and projects related to the design, installation, operation, support, upgrades, and maintenance of infrastructure, including software, servers, networking, and storage. Maintains and supports complex and critical infrastructure. Provides escalated user support for server Engineers, requests, problem resolution, system changes, and upgrades. Analyzes infrastructure performance and resolves problems or makes appropriate recommendations. Contributes to and ensures full compliance with operational standards, procedures, and best practices. In this role, the Senior Systems Engineer could serve as a product or service owner. Also participates in scheduled on-call rotation and manages team service management ticket queues.

Specific Responsibilities:

• Leads planning, development, and coordination of operations and projects for current and future infrastructures.
• Anticipates the impact of growth and operational changes, recommending necessary design and process adjustments.
• Participates in disaster recovery and business continuity planning, including backup, recovery procedures, and high availability configurations.
• Ensures data and media recoverability by implementing scheduled system backups and database archive operations.
• Acts as a project liaison for implementations and upgrades, serving as the primary point of communication between CI and Project Leaders.
• Facilitates coordination, ensuring a thorough understanding of project requirements, attending meetings, documenting discussions, and managing ticketing.
• Maintains policies and standard procedures to maximize system uptime and ensure compliance with security and operational standards.
• Monitors security alerts, ensuring patches are applied in a timely and automated manner while collaborating with developers to upgrade custom code for security compliance.
• Documents and maintains system standards while researching and recommending innovative approaches to system administration tasks.
• Creates and maintains standard OS installation images for virtualization templates to support consistent deployment.
• Monitors application performance on servers and optimizes software and hardware allocations for peak efficiency.
• Performs capacity planning for projected growth and collaborates with development teams to build, rebuild, and update virtual machines, applications, and infrastructure components.
• Leads troubleshooting efforts for applications, operating systems, server hardware, network communications, and storage infrastructure.
• Provides second-level support, leading incident resolution efforts, offering user support, and consulting on best practices for deployed systems.
• Provides work direction and/or supervises entry level staff members, subordinates, contractors, vendors and students.

Miscellaneous

Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Successful completion of a full 4-year course of study in an accredited college or university leading to a bachelor's or higher degree; or appropriate combination of education and experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• 4 years system administration or other relevant experience required.

Benefits:

At Northwestern, we are proud to provide meaningful and competitive benefits. The available benefits package for this position will include health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance; paid vacation and holidays; paid medical/sick and parentalleave;tuition benefits for the employee and dependents; pre-tax and flex spending accounts for commuting and dependent care; generous retirement savings options; and wellness programs. For a comprehensive overview of available benefits, including eligibility details, visit us at https://www.northwestern.edu/hr/benefits/index.html to learn more.

• health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance
• paid vacation and holidays
• paid medical/sick and parentalleave
• tuition benefits for the employee and dependents
• pre-tax and flex spending accounts for commuting and dependent care
• generous retirement savings options
• and wellness programs

Work-Life and Wellness:

Northwestern offers comprehensive programs and services to help you and your family navigate life's challenges and opportunities, and adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles. We support flexible work arrangements where possible and programs to help you locate and pay for quality, affordable childcare and senior/adult care. Visit us at https://www.northwestern.edu/hr/benefits/work-life/index.html to learn more.

Professional Growth & Development:

Northwestern supports employee career development in all circumstances whether your workspace is on campus or at home. If you're interested in developing your professional potential or continuing your formal education, we offer a variety of tools and resources. Visit us at https://www.northwestern.edu/hr/learning/index.html to learn more.

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics, including disability and veteran status. View Northwestern's non-discrimination statement. Job applicants who wish to request an accommodation in the application or hiring process should contact the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance. View additional information on the accommodations process.