IT Systems Administrator IV

Purpose:

The IT Systems Administrator IV is the senior technical authority for the enterprise infrastructure that keeps Maxim Crane Works’ nationwide operations connected, secure, and ready to perform. As the highest-level individual contributor in the Systems Administration career path, this role designs, evolves, and protects the cloud, on-premises, and hybrid services that enable our branches, field teams, fleet-facing operations, and corporate functions to serve customers without interruption.

Reporting to the Infrastructure Manager, the Systems Administrator IV turns business growth, operational needs, security expectations, and modernization priorities into durable infrastructure solutions. This role provides technical leadership for architecture, lifecycle management, resilience, security, standards, and continual improvement; leads complex incidents and high-impact initiatives; and helps build the scalable foundation behind Maxim’s ongoing digital transformation. While the role has no direct reports, it is expected to lead through sound technical judgment, mentorship, collaboration, and influence across IT and the business.

This position is based out of Maxim Crane Works’ Canonsburg, PA office. Candidates must reside within a reasonable commuting distance to accommodate occasional in-person collaboration and business needs.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develop technical roadmaps, evaluate emerging technologies, and align infrastructure decisions with organizational objectives. including architecture, standards, availability, capacity, security controls, supportability, lifecycle planning, and continual improvement.
• Serve as technical owner for assigned enterprise platforms including Microsoft 365, Azure, Entra ID, Active Directory, Server management, messaging/email routing, collaboration platforms, and related infrastructure services.
• Lead and Maintain virtualization/compute requirements, backup/recovery, disaster recovery programs, patching, monitoring, integrations, and system/hardware lifecycle management.
• Lead technical responses for major incidents; direct root-cause analysis, establish permanent corrective actions, and communicate technical risk and recovery status to leadership and stakeholders.
• Support infrastructure requirements for geographically distributed branch locations, field personnel, and operational business units.
• Develop 12–24-month service roadmaps that address technical debt, lifecycle events, resilience, capacity, vendor dependencies, cloud optimization, and evolving business requirements.
• Create reusable automation patterns and integration approaches using PowerShell, Microsoft Graph, APIs, and workflow tools; evaluate technologies and vendor performance to balance cost, risk, reliability, and business impact.
• Effectively collaborate with Security, Applications, Service Desk, vendors, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into secure, scalable, supportable services.
• Mentor Systems Administrators I–III, review technical designs and changes, and raise team capability through standards, coaching, and knowledge transfer.
• Owning the secure configuration and operational health of assigned platforms (Cisco, Meraki, Server Patching, Active Directory, Azure, Entra ID, etc.).
• Partnering with Security on architecture/change reviews and putting security standards into practice.

Requirements:

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree, advanced technical certifications, or equivalent relevant experience. High school diploma or GED required.

Experience:

• 8+ years of progressive systems administration, infrastructure engineering, or platform-operations experience, including demonstrated ownership of enterprise services.

Required Skills and Knowledge:

• Expert knowledge of Microsoft 365, Azure, Entra ID, Windows Server, Active Directory, Group Policy, Exchange Online, DNS, DHCP, automation, and service operations.
• Working knowledge of Cisco SDWAN, Palo Alto, Telephony Systems (Avaya), and Nutanix Virtual clusters.
• Expertise in enterprise endpoint management, device compliance, security baselines, disaster recovery procedures, backup/retention modernization, research/deploy modern workplace technologies, lead architecture-level decisions, and own a service roadmap from design through operations.
• Advanced PowerShell scripting and automation, including Microsoft Graph, APIs, workflow integration, implementing Infrastructure as Code standards, and reusable operational patterns.
• Strong knowledge of identity, SAML, SSO, Enterprise Apps, App Registry, MFA, Conditional Access, Privileged Access Management, resilience, backup/recovery, and security-by-design principles.
• Advanced troubleshooting and problem-management skills across infrastructure domains and business-critical service dependencies. Ability to lead major incidents, complex projects, vendor discussions, and technical decision-making with sound judgment under ambiguity.

Ability to articulate cost, risk, resilience, and business-impact tradeoffs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders; demonstrated mentoring, technical coaching, and influence