Grouping job skills into easily understandable collections
Level I, Novice System Administrator
- Required skills
- Has strong inter-personal and communication skills; is capable of explaining simple procedures in writing or verbally, has good phone skills.
- Is familiar with UNIX and its commands/utilities at a user level; can edit files, use a a shell, find users’ home directories, navigate through the file system, and use i/o redirection.
- Is able to follow instructions well.
- Required background: 2 years of college or equivalent post-high-school education or experience.
- Desirable:
- A degree or certificate in computer science or a related field.
- Previous experience in customer support, computer operations, system administration or another related area. Motivated to advance in the profession.
- Appropriate responsibilities:
- Performs routine tasks under the direct supervision of a more experienced system administrator.
- Acts as a front-line interface to users, accepting trouble reports and dispatching them to appropriate system administrators.
Level II, Junior System Administrator
- Required skills
- Strong inter-personal and communication skills; capable of training users in applications and UNIX fundamentals, and writing basic documentation.
- High skill with of most UNIX commands/utilities. Familiarity with most basic system administration tools and processes; for example, can boot/shutdown a machine, add and remove user accounts, use backup programs and fsck, maintain system database files (groups, hosts, aliases).
- Fundamental understanding of a UNIX-based operating system; for example, understands job control, soft and hard links, distinctions between the kernel and the shell.
- Required background:
- One to three years of system administration experience.
- Desirable:
- A degree in computer science or a related field.
- Familiarity with networked/distributed computing environment concepts; for example, can use the route command, add a workstation to a network, and mount remote filesystems.
- Ability to write scripts in some administrative language (Tk, Perl, a shell).
- Programming experience in any applicable language.
- Appropriate responsibilities:
- Administers a small site alone or assists in the administration of a larger system.
- Works under the general supervision of a system administrator or computer systems manager.
Level III, Intermediate/Advanced System Administrator
- Required skills
- Strong inter-personal and communication skills; capable of writing purchase justifications, training users in complex topics, making presentations to an internal audience, and interacting positively with upper management.
- Independent problem solving; self-direction.
- Is comfortable with most aspects of UNIX systems administration; for example, configuration of mail systems, system installation and configuration, printing systems, fundamentals of security, installing third-party software.
- A solid understanding of a UNIX-based operating system;
- understands paging and swapping, inter-process communication, devices and what device drivers do, file system concepts (“inode”, “superblock”).
- Familiarity with fundamental networking/distributed computing environment concepts; can configure NFS and NIS, can use nslookup or dig to check information in the DNS, understands basic routing concepts.
- Ability to write scripts in some administrative language (Tk, Perl, a shell).
- Ability to do minimal debugging and modification of C programs.
- Required background:
- Three to five years systems administration experience.
- Desirable:
- A degree in computer science or a related field.
- Significant programming background in any applicable language.
- Appropriate responsibilities:
- Receives general instructions for new responsibilities from supervisor.
- Administers a mid-sized site alone or assists in the administration of a larger site.
- Initiates some new responsibilities and helps to plan for the future of the site/network.
- Manages novice system administrators or operators.
- Evaluates and/or recommends purchases; has strong influence on purchasing process.
Level IV, Senior System Administrator
- Required skills
- Strong inter-personal and communication skills; capable of writing proposals or papers, acting as a vendor liaison, making presentations to customer or client audiences or professional peers, and working closely with upper management.
- Ability to solve problems quickly and and completely.
- Ability to identify tasks which require automation and automate them.
- A solid understanding of a UNIX-based operating system; understands paging and swapping, inter-process communication, devices and what device drivers do, file system concepts (“inode”, “superblock”), can use performance analysis to tune systems.
- A solid understanding of networking/distributed computing environment concepts; understands principles of routing, client/server programming, the design of consistent network-wide filesystem layouts.
- Ability to program in an administrative language (Tk, Perl, a shell), to port C programs from one platform to another, and to write small C programs.
- Required background:
- More than five years previous systems administration experience.
- Desirable: 2. A degree in computer science or a related field. 3. Extensive programming background in any applicable language. 4. Publications within the field of system administration.
- Appropriate responsibilities:
- Designs/implements complex local and wide-area networks of machines.
- Manages a large site or network.
- Works under general direction from senior management.
- Establishes/ recommends policies on system use and services.
- Provides technical lead and/or supervises system administrators, system programmers, or others of equivalent seniority.
- Has purchasing authority and responsibility for purchase justification.
Check Offs
These are things you might want to add to the base job descriptions as either required or desirable.
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Local Environment Experience
- Experience with the specific operating systems, applications, or programming languages in use at the site (for example SunOS, AIX, CAE/CAD software, FrameMaker, Mathematica, Fortran, Ada). Experience with the work done by the users at the site.
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Heterogeneity Experience
- Experience with more than one UNIX-based operating system.
- Experience with sites running more than one UNIX-based operating system.
- Familiarity with both System V and BSD-based UNIX operating systems.
- Experience with non-UNIX operating systems (for example, MS-DOS, MacOS, or VMS).
- Experience with internetworking UNIX and other operating systems (MS-DOS, MacOS, VMS).
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Programming Skills
- Extensive programming experience in an administrative language (Tk, Perl, a shell).
- Extensive programming experience in any applicable language.
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Networking Skills
- Experience configuring network file systems (for example, NFS, RFS, or AFS).
- Experience with network file synchronization schemes (for example, rdist and track).
- Experience configuring automounters.
- Experience configuring license managers.
- Experience configuring NIS/NIS+.
- Experience with TCP/IP networking protocols (ability to debug and program at the network level).
- Experience with non-TCP/IP networking protocols (for example, OSI, Chaosnet, DECnet, Appletalk, Novell Netware, Banyan Vines).
- Experience with high-speed networking (for example, FDDI, ATM, or SONET).
- Experience with complex TCP/IP networks (networks that contain routers).
- Experience with highly complex TCP/IP networks (networks that contain multiple routers and multiple media).
- Experience configuring and maintaining routers.
- Experience maintaining a site-wide modem pool/terminal servers.
- Experience with X/X terminals.
- Experience with dial-up networking (for example, SLIP, PPP, or UUCP).
- Experience at a site that is connected to the Internet.
- Experience installing/configuring DNS/BIND.
- Experience installing/administering Usenet news.
- Experience as postmaster of a site with external connections.
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Security
- Experience with network security (for example, building firewalls, deploying authentication systems, or applying cryptography to network applications).
- Experience with classified computing.
- Experience with multi-level classified environments.
- Experience with host security (for example, passwords, uids/gids, file permissions, file system integrity, use of security packages).
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Site Specialities
- Experience at sites with over 1,000 computers, over 1,000 users, or over a terabyte of disk space.
- Experience with supercomputers.
- Experience coordinating multiple independent computer facilities (for example, working for the central group at a large company or university).
- Experience with a site with 100% uptime requirement.
- Experience developing/implementing a site disaster recovery plan.
- Experience with a site requiring charge-back accounting.
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Documentation
- Background in technical publications, documentation, or desktop publishing.
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Databases
- Experience using relational databases.
- Experience using a database query language.
- Experience programming in a database query language.
- Previous experience as a database administrator.
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Hardware
- Experience installing and maintaining the network cabling in use at the site.
- Experience installing boards and memory into systems.
- Experience with SCSI device setup and installation.
- Experience installing/configuring peripherals (for example, disks, modems, printers, or data acquisition devices).
- Experience with board-level diagnosis and repair of computer systems.
- Experience with component-level diagnosis and repair of computer system.
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Management
- Budget responsibility.
- Experience in writing personnel reviews, and ranking processes.
- Experience in interviewing/hiring.
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