System Administrator
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research center at the University of Washington. Its mission is to deliver to the world timely, relevant, and scientifically valid evidence to improve health policy and practice. IHME carries out its mission through a range of projects within different research areas including the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors; Future Health Scenarios; Cost Effectiveness and Efficiency; Resource Tracking; and Impact Evaluations. Our vision is to provide policymakers, donors, and researchers with the highest-quality quantitative evidence base so all people live long lives in full health.
IHME is committed to providing the evidence base necessary to help solve the world’s most important health problems. This requires creativity and innovation, which is cultivated by an inclusive, diverse, and equitable environment that respects and appreciates differences, embraces collaboration, and invites the voices of all IHME team members.
IHME has an outstanding opportunity for a System Administrator on our Infrastructure Team. We are looking for someone with a customer service mindset, strong interpersonal skills, team player, results-oriented attitude, commitment, adaptability, and flexibility. The System Administrator will work with a team of system administrators and engineers to build and support a growing infrastructure to support an active research environment. These systems are vital to the success of the Institute and its mission, to improve the health of the world’s populations by providing the best information on population health. Additionally, the System Administrator will be working with professors, researchers, and other technical staff to develop what the Institute needs to build better metrics and ultimately improve global health.
This position’s primary role is to support ongoing operations of complex systems, including maintaining datacenter infrastructure, operating systems (this position will work primarily with Linux, occasionally with Windows), high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, and systems applications. This position is contingent upon project funding availability.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
Build, configure, and maintain systems
- Build physical and virtual systems using standard build processes.
- Assist in requirements gathering, development, and testing of new systems or system upgrades.
- Configure systems to adhere to enterprise, departmental, and team standards.
- Create new environments as assigned.
- Ensure high availability of systems by developing and using tools to identify problems and opportunities for improvement.
- Regularly collect and trend performance data. Analyze and configure systems for optimal performance.
- Keep systems up to date with appropriate patches, firmware, and other fixes. Schedule necessary maintenance for systems, plan for downtime, and notify affected users if applicable.
- Maintain appropriate security access and protection, in compliance with existing security policies and best practices.
- Refresh/recreate test, development, and sandbox environments as required.
- Schedule and plan system upgrades as needed. Communicate outages to affected users as required.
- Manage backup and disaster recovery systems.
- Ensure compliance of system security patches.
- Manage infrastructure software such as Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, and VPN.
- Implement and manage automated client operating system deployments.
- Implement and manage configuration management.
- Assist HPC cluster users with cluster usage best practices, troubleshooting, and diagnosis.
- Follow IT Services standards for making changes in production environments. This includes, but is not limited to, conducting a production readiness review, following change control processes, participating in a security review, and communicating with stakeholders and affected users.
Develop and maintain system documentation
- Create and update system architecture diagram(s).
- Create and update standard operational procedures.
- Document system configuration.
- Create and manage backup policies.
- Update system inventory after any post-deployment changes. Maintain up-to-date configuration documents.
- Produce operational documentation for technical staff.
- Place documentation and code in appropriate repositories. Communicate updates to team.
- Update documented issues and incidents regularly.
- Keep team informed about pertinent operational processes.
General
- Assist with standards development and quality improvement.
- Assist with administrative duties such as attending conference calls, equipment tagging and surplus, and storage room cleanup, as needed. Assist helpdesk with escalations of issues as needed.
- Communicate clearly and effectively while contributing as a productive member of the IT team and the Institute as a whole. Work closely with other team members to help them with relevant tasks, show them how to learn new skills, and help resolve emerging problems on different projects.
- Attend relevant meetings, adhere to deadlines, and participate as a vital member to collectively advance team-level objectives.
- Perform all required compliance with university and state policies on a timely basis.
- Rack, cable, inventory, and configure new datacenter equipment as needed.
- Work with vendors to diagnose and resolve hardware issues as needed.
- Monitor and react to operational failures of datacenter hardware as needed.
- Other duties as assigned.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, statistics, or related and two years of related experience, OR equivalent combination of education/experience.
ADDITIONAL QUALIFICATIONS:
- A commitment to working to alongside others at IHME to illuminate the health impacts of systemic racism and to work within IHME to make our organization more diverse and inclusive. See IHME’s DEI statement here: http://www.healthdata.org/get-involved/careers/dei
- Two years of experience managing enterprise Linux, VMWare, or Windows server and client platforms.
- Understanding of security and systems best practices.
- Experience in security system design and engineering.
- Ability to program/script proficiently in a Python or Bash.
- Familiarity with troubleshooting network problems and with networking concepts and protocols.
- Strong interpersonal, teambuilding, and communication skills.
- Self-starter and demonstrated ability to learn/adapt new methods to support this role.
- Ability to deliver quality systems under deadline pressures.
DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Demonstrated track record of innovative solutions deploying and supporting IT initiatives.
- Interest in the promotion of global health.
- Familiarity with supporting Java, Bash, Python, PHP, reusable code.
- Experience in security system design and engineering.
- Ability to be well organized and detail-oriented.
- Interest and aptitude in information technology.
WORKING CONDITIONS:
- Weekend and evening work sometimes required.
- This position is open to anyone authorized to work in the US. The UW is not able to sponsor visas for staff positions.
- Expected to participate in 24x7 on-call rotation response to production system issues with other IHME-IT team members.
- Office is located in Seattle, Washington. This position is eligible to work fully remote in the US; work schedule required to overlap 50% of IHME office hours, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific Time.
Application Process:
The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process. These assessments may include Workforce Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others. Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.