Lead System Administrator

Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations, enabling them to improve operational efficiency, build strong relationships, and raise more money to support their missions. Approximately 22,000 organizations in 75 countries - including the American Red Cross, Dartmouth College, the WGBH Educational Foundation, Episcopal High School, Lincoln Center, Cancer Research UK, Special Olympics, and Arthritis Foundation - use one or more of Blackbaud products and services for fundraising, constituent relationship management, financial management, direct marketing, school administration, ticketing, business intelligence, website management, prospect research, consulting, and analytics.

Since 1981, Blackbaud's sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide. Under the leadership of Marc Chardon (former Microsoft Executive), with revenues over $302 Million, we employ over 2,000 employees in 6 countries who are part of our philanthropic corporate culture where volunteerism is encouraged. Listed as a NASDAQ Global Select Market under ticker symbol 'BLKB', we are headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina. We also operate in Cambridge, MA; Denver, CO; Indianapolis, IN; San Diego, CA; Toronto, Ontario; Glasgow, Scotland; London, England; the Netherlands and Sydney, Australia.

The objectives of the Lead System Administrator are to function as a hands-on leader to manage, monitor and maintain assigned systems for high availability and optimum performance while providing leadership oversight with the server infrastructure and system administration team. 

Major Responsibilities and Critical Tasks:

·         Work with Corporate IT Management to create, establish and improve on system administrator processes and procedures.  These processes include, but are not limited to, patch management automation, server function automation, escalation processes, incident management, project management, BCDR processes and performance improvement

·         Conduct performance reviews, produce weekly reports, promote teamwork and manage the staff development of system administrators

·         Lead server virtualization for internal cloud development yielding efficiencies and cost reductions

·         Proactively identify and implement application, infrastructure and operating system monitoring/alerting for security, performance and predicted hardware growth

·         Engineering, installation, configuration, maintenance and 24x7 on-call support for hardware, operating systems and applications associated with Microsoft/SQL/Citrix/VMware/Web server environment(s)

·         Develop and maintain detailed system documentation on assigned environments, servers and enterprise infrastructure

·         Train co-workers as needed to maximize availability and reliability of server environment(s)

·         Excellent problem solving, communication, and customer service skills

·         Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast paced environment

·         Promote teamwork with a positive attitude and contribute to continuous improvement

·         Maintaining and improving Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

·         Communicate system outages, requirements, and service to appropriate Blackbaud personnel

·         Limited travel may be required

Required Experience:

·         Proven track record of leading a technical team in an enterprise datacenter environment

·         At least two years of using scripting technologies to introduce efficiencies in Windows management and active directory – PowerShell scripting required

·         2 or more years experience with virtual technologies – VMWare ESX 3.5/4.x HA 

·         5 or more years experience in supporting Microsoft Network and Server Technologies

·         5 years experience with TCP/IP networking technologies (CCNA)

·         Solid understanding of data center cooling and power best practices and concepts

·         Experience in the following technologies is preferred:

o   Windows Server 2008 – Clustered and non-clustered

o   SQL Enterprise 2008 – Clustered and non-clustered

o   Oracle 10g – Windows Environment

o   Microsoft IIS 7.5

o   Microsoft Exchange 2007/2010

o   Microsoft Active directory

o   Apache Tomcat 5.x/6.x; JBoss web server 1.x; JBoss app server 4.x and above

o   Citrix Presentation Server 4.5, Metaframe XPe, Metaframe

o   SAN technologies – HP EVA; Hitachi AMS 2500

o   Cisco switching, routing, and VOIP

o   BMC Atrium Orchestrator (BAO)/ BMC BladeLogic

o   Nimsoft monitoring/alerting - NimBUS

·         Certifications and Licenses desired: MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

·         Bachelor’s Degree required - (Computer Science desired)

·         The ideal candidate will have experience working in technology environments with at least 100 servers