Systems Administrator Job Description
A complete systems administrator job description template, the ATS keywords hiring teams screen for, and how to tell the cloud track from the on-prem one.
"Systems Administrator" used to describe one clear job: Windows Server, Active Directory, on-prem infrastructure. It increasingly describes two different jobs wearing the same title. One track modernized toward the cloud and looks a lot like a junior platform or DevOps role; the other stayed close to directory services, patching and backups. Read the ATS keywords before assuming which one a given posting means — Active Directory and Group Policy point one direction, Terraform and cloud provisioning point the other.
Sysadmin work is also unusually remote-compatible compared to IT support, because most of it happens over a console, RDP or SSH session rather than at a desk. A fully remote listing for this role, like this one, isn't the exception it would be for on-site support — it's close to the norm.
Scope varies more by company size than the title suggests. A small company often makes one systems administrator responsible for everything a mid-size company splits across a sysadmin, a network engineer and a cloud engineer. Check the responsibilities list to see whether this is a specialist role or a 'whoever's available' one before comparing pay across postings.
Ormsbury · Remote (US)
Full-time · Remote
$78,000 – $105,000
About the role
Ormsbury runs a split environment: core identity-verification services live on-prem in a co-located data center in Chicago for latency and compliance reasons, and everything else runs in AWS. We're hiring a Systems Administrator to keep the on-prem half healthy — Windows and Linux servers, Active Directory, backups, patching — while working closely with the platform team on the cloud half.
This is a fully remote role. You'll carry a share of an on-call rotation for infrastructure alerts, and you'll be trusted to make a judgment call on a production system at 2 a.m. without waking someone up to approve it first.
What you'll do
- Administer Windows Server and Linux hosts: patching, monitoring, capacity planning and lifecycle management.
- Manage Active Directory, Group Policy and DNS for roughly 250 user and service accounts.
- Own backup and disaster-recovery processes, including regular restore testing — an untested backup is a guess, not a plan.
- Maintain air-gapped backup copies of critical systems as part of our ransomware-resilience posture.
- Provision and decommission servers and services, on-prem and in AWS, following change-management process.
- Investigate and resolve infrastructure incidents, and write the after-action notes.
- Automate recurring administrative tasks with PowerShell or Bash instead of repeating them by hand.
- Share an on-call rotation for infrastructure alerts, roughly one week in four.
What we're looking for
- 3+ years administering Windows Server and/or Linux systems in production.
- Solid Active Directory, Group Policy and DNS experience.
- Practical backup and disaster-recovery experience, including having actually run a restore, not just scheduled one.
- Comfort scripting in PowerShell or Bash to automate work rather than repeat it manually.
- Working knowledge of at least one major cloud provider, even without deep specialization.
- Clear incident documentation — the next on-call person should be able to follow exactly what you did.
Nice to have
- Experience with configuration management or infrastructure-as-code tooling: Ansible, Terraform.
- Exposure to virtualization platforms: VMware, Hyper-V, or Proxmox.
- Familiarity with monitoring and alerting tools: Datadog, Zabbix, Nagios, or similar.
- Prior experience in a regulated or compliance-driven environment.
- CompTIA Server+ or Linux+ certification, or equivalent hands-on experience.
Benefits
- Medical, dental and vision coverage, with employee premiums covered in full.
- 401(k) with a 4% company match.
- Fully remote, with an annual budget to set up a proper home office.
- $2,000 annual learning budget for training, conferences or certification exams.
- Twenty days of paid time off plus company holidays.
Salary range
As posted for this sample role. Real pay varies by employer, location and experience.
$78,000–$105,000/ yr
ATS keywords for this role
The applicant tracking system (ATS) — the recruiting software a hiring team searches and filters applicants with — will screen for these. Weight shows how central each one is to this specific posting.
Required and central (4)
Important (6)
Mentioned in passing (8)
Frequently asked questions
Is systems administrator becoming an outdated title?
Not outdated, but splitting in two. Some postings using this title are really cloud or platform engineering roles; others are traditional on-prem administration. Check whether the keywords lean toward Active Directory and on-prem tooling or toward Terraform and cloud provisioning before assuming which job you're applying to.
Can this role really be fully remote?
Yes, more reliably than most IT roles — most sysadmin work happens over a remote session rather than requiring physical presence. A company that still runs its own data center, like this one, usually keeps someone within reach for the rare hands-on-hardware emergency, whether that's a local contractor or an occasional site visit, but the day-to-day administration itself doesn't require being in the building.
How is this different from a network engineer role?
Overlapping but distinct. A systems administrator owns servers, accounts and the operating-system layer; a network engineer owns the routing, switching and firewalls that connect them. Smaller companies often merge the two into one role — worth asking about directly if the posting is ambiguous.
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