System Administrator

This position provides 24/7 monitoring, rapid incident response, and cross-functional coordination to ensure the stability, availability, and performance of enterprise IT services. As demand for critical IT services continues to grow, this role is essential for maintaining operational readiness, improving service delivery, and supporting mission success.

Scope of Work

The selected contractor will provide qualified personnel to perform the following:

• Monitor IT systems, infrastructure, and applications to detect operational issues.
• Respond to incidents and escalate complex problems when necessary.
• Utilize monitoring and observability tools to identify and diagnose performance issues.
• Write and disseminate alert notifications to stakeholders.
• Contribute to post-incident analysis and documentation.
• Support business workflow automation and reporting using Microsoft Power Platform tools.
• Apply ITIL and ITSM best practices.
• Diagnose and troubleshoot network, server, application, and database issues at the Tier III level.
• Interact professionally with executive leadership and customers during high-priority incidents.

Key Responsibilities

Incident Monitoring & Detection

• Continuously monitor IT systems, infrastructure, and applications for outages, performance degradation, and anomalies.
• Respond to alerts generated by enterprise monitoring tools (such as Dynatrace and Nagios) by assessing severity, impact, and business risk.
• Identify opportunities to improve operational workflows and monitoring effectiveness.

Incident Response & Troubleshooting

• Respond to incidents reported by Tier I support teams.
• Analyze, troubleshoot, and determine appropriate next steps.
• Classify and prioritize incidents based on ITIL, ITSM, and IOC procedures.
• Perform Tier III troubleshooting across:
• Network infrastructure
• Servers
• Applications
• Databases

Escalation Management

• Follow established escalation procedures when incidents require additional technical expertise.
• Coordinate with appropriate technical teams to ensure timely resolution.
• Communicate incident status, business impact, and resolution progress with internal stakeholders, leadership, and customers.
• Document all escalations within the problem management system (BMC Helix).

Tier I Service Desk Support

• Provide guidance to Tier I analysts on incident prioritization and escalation.
• Assist with troubleshooting widespread user issues.
• Create, update, and maintain internal knowledge articles and operational procedures.

Observability & Continuous Monitoring

• Partner with system owners to onboard applications and services into enterprise monitoring platforms.
• Define monitoring requirements and operational visibility standards.
• Optimize dashboards, alerting thresholds, and monitoring configurations.
• Recommend observability best practices to improve operational readiness.
• Utilize tools such as Dynatrace to monitor application, infrastructure, and network performance.
• Proactively identify performance bottlenecks and potential security concerns before they become major incidents.

Reporting & Documentation

• Maintain detailed incident documentation and resolution records.
• Report incident trends, recurring issues, and overall system health.
• Complete comprehensive shift handoffs to ensure continuity between operations teams.
• Serve as Watch Commander during HIROC activations at the discretion of the IOC Manager.

Required Qualifications

• U.S. Citizenship
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills
• Strong understanding of IT operations, infrastructure, and enterprise service delivery
• Experience with enterprise monitoring and observability platforms
• Experience using ticketing systems and incident management tools
• Familiarity with knowledge management processes
• Experience with:
• Microsoft Power BI
• Microsoft Power Automate
• Microsoft Power Platform
• Ability to work in a 24x7 operational environment

Preferred Qualifications

• ITIL Certification
• CompTIA Certification
• Related technical certifications
• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology or a related field (preferred)
• Formal training in supported technologies

Preferred certifications or experience include:

• Networking
• Enterprise Monitoring
• Microsoft Technologies

Technical Experience

Observability & Monitoring

• Experience using enterprise monitoring platforms to monitor applications, infrastructure, and enterprise services.
• Ability to interpret performance metrics and identify operational issues.
• Strong understanding of application performance monitoring (APM).

Operational Analysis

• Correlate data from multiple monitoring sources.
• Identify trends and recurring issues.
• Assess operational impact and recommend improvements.
• Improve alert quality by reducing false positives.

IT Service Management

• Strong understanding of ITIL and ITSM processes, including:
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Service Level Management

Technical Troubleshooting

Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot:

• Networks
• Servers
• Applications
• Databases

Communication

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to communicate effectively during high-pressure incidents.
• Experience working with technical teams, leadership, and customers.

Incident Management

• Ability to assess incident severity and business impact.
• Strong escalation and prioritization skills.
• Experience conducting root cause analysis and resolving recurring issues.

Microsoft Power Platform

Experience using Microsoft Power Platform for operational reporting and automation, including:

• Power BI
• Power Automate
• Data analysis
• Operational dashboards
• Business workflow automation