Senior Systems Administrator
Location: Statesville, NC (5 days per week on-site required)
Compensation: Based on experience. Starting at $110,000
The Job
You’ll work for a national US building manufacturer with 3 production facilities across the southeast US and Texas.
We manufacture wood and metal buildings. Our employees depend on the two ERP systems that we host on-premises in order to work. If our systems are down, manufacturing and sales stop. You are the person who prevents that and fixes it when it happens anyway.
The Infrastructure
• Small Hyper-V infrastructure(2 servers)
• Mixed Linux and Windows server environment
• Microsoft 365: Entra, Exchange, Intune
• Zoom UCaaS
• MSSQL + PostgreSQL databases
• Linux/MySQL VPS for website hosting and ecommerce
• Unifi Networking and Access Control
• Network connected manufacturing machinery
• CCTV camera system
• Mixed macOS and Windows environment
• iPads
What You'll Actually Do
• Keep our ERPs running. Downtime costs us thousands of dollars per hour.
• Manage Hyper-V infrastructure and VM health. You’ll oversee patching, monitoring, and capacity planning.
• Manage the Microsoft 365 Tenant for our 65 users. Exchange,
• Set up new devices for users. iPads, computers etc.
• Ensure databases and db servers are generally healthy. Professional DBA support is a possibility if needed.
• Maintain enterprise networking across multiple sites (You should already know how to configure VLANs, QoS, and troubleshoot switching issues without having to use AI or web search for the basics).
• Support manufacturing equipment connectivity. Metal processing equipment is on the network and sometimes has on-site and extremely edge case issues. You have to love fixing anything techy.
• Handle remote site issues. If remote network goes down you may need to drive there (1-3 hours max) or guide someone on-site through fixing it over the phone.
• Assist the CIO with the overall infrastructure design
• Document everything. You're a team of 3: yourself and an L1 support, plus the CIO for extreme situations. If you get hit by a bus, someone needs to be able to figure out what you built.
• Function as L2 support for the IT team.
• Security and backup verification. Making sure our backup infrastructure actually works, all the time.
• AV and cybersecurity oversight. Although this is not the CISO role, this role is responsible for implementing security related projects.
What We're Looking For
You must have:
• 7+ years managing production enterprise infrastructure, including virtualization (Hyper-V, VMware, or Proxmox)
• Real networking skills. You've physically racked switches, pulled cable, configured trunks and VLANs, and diagnosed MTU/routing issues with a packet capture. You don't need to look up what a default gateway is.
• A bit of database administration experience (MSSQL and PostgreSQL specifically. Some MySQL is great too)
• ERP system management experience. Any production ERP where downtime had financial consequences.
• Willingness to work on-site in Statesville. This is not remote. You need to be 30-45 minutes from the rack when something breaks.
• A valid driver's license. You'll occasionally drive to our other facilities.
• A sterling character, backed by a clean background check and solid references. Trust is key. If we can’t trust you it won’t work.
• Microsoft 365 certifications strongly preferred
You should be comfortable with:
• Being on call. We don't have a 24/7 NOC besides you. If the ERP goes down at 9pm, you're the one getting the call. Realistically, that doesn’t happen a lot but if it does, you need to be there.
• Manufacturing environments. Our server room is secure and nice, but manufacturing floors that you might go to can be noisy and imperfect.
• Working under a CIO and driving the system implementations and giving recommendations. Spotting structural issues and making sure key stakeholders are aware of them is part of your job. Treating error conditions as routine and not caring about infrastructure issues will get you fired.
• Figure-it-out-itis. If you don’t know, saying "I don't know" and then figuring it out. We're not looking for someone who has done everything — but you need to be the kind of person who can troubleshoot a cascading switch failure at 2am without panicking.
Disqualifiers:
• If your primary troubleshooting method is asking AI, this isn't for you. AI is a great tool that we recommend you use heavily, but you need foundational knowledge to know how to effectively use AI.
• If you've only worked in 10-20 user environments with an external MSP who does the real work, you'll struggle here.
• If you need hand-holding or a defined project list handed to you weekly, this won't work.
Why You Might Want This Job
• Open environment to discuss issues. We don’t hide things under the table and do politicking.
• Budget for tools and hardware. We're not penny-pinching on the right hardware to make our infrastructure run.
• Manufacturing is interesting. You're supporting systems that directly make physical products, not optimizing ad click-through rates.
• Stable company. We’ve been here for 13 years and have built a solid reputation in the community.
• No corporate bureaucracy. You report to the CIO, not a committee.
