Senior Systems Administrator

Senior Systems Administrator (Contract)

Rate: £500–£600 per day (Umbrella) – Inside IR35

Duration: 12 months

Location: Somerset

Working model: Hybrid (2–3 days on-site per week)

Clearance: Active SC required

We’re recruiting for an experienced Senior Systems Administrator to join a high-performing technical operations team supporting and improving a complex enterprise infrastructure estate. You’ll provide hands-on 3rd line support, lead platform enhancements, and contribute to the design and delivery of resilient, secure services across on-prem and cloud.

The role

• Provide 3rd line support across core infrastructure platforms (server, storage, networking, cloud).
• Design, configure, test and implement improvements to meet complex business and operational needs.
• Maintain operational health across availability, performance, security, patching, backup/restore and resilience.
• Work closely with technical teams, service management and vendors to resolve high-impact incidents and deliver changes.
• Produce documentation, standards and operational procedures to support audit and governance.
• Participate in an on-call rota for out-of-hours support.

Key technologies

• Windows Server 2016/2019+
• Microsoft Hyper-V / enterprise virtualisation
• Active Directory , File Services, SCCM , DHCP , Failover Clustering
• NetApp or equivalent enterprise storage
• Exchange / Office 365 hybrid environments
• PowerShell
• Linux
• IP networking / troubleshooting
• Cloud: Azure , AWS , Google Cloud
• Containers (cloud or on-prem)

What we’re looking for

• Strong background in enterprise server and storage administration at a senior/technical lead level.
• Proven experience designing and delivering infrastructure improvements in complex environments.
• Solid understanding of IT security best practice within regulated/government-style settings.
• Skilled at root cause analysis and implementing proactive fixes that reduce incident volume.
• Comfortable engaging both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Desirable

• Experience building admin tooling/automation or scripting beyond day-to-day ops.
• Exposure to broader architecture or technical assurance activities.

Additional info

• This is a long-term contract with a mix of BAU and project-based platform improvement.
• The team environment is collaborative, with scope to lead on technical decisions and service enhancement.