System Administrator I

• Windows Server - on bare metal and virtualized, running our proprietary visitation and communications applications

• Linux - Ubuntu and Debian

• Web and application tier - IIS and NGINX fronting our production applications

• GPU compute - NVIDIA V100 and A100 nodes

• Voice - Session border controllers (Ribbon and AudioCodes Mediant 3100) and SIP trunking to carriers. Very few candidates arrive with SBC experience, so we treat this as something we teach, not something we screen on.

• Databases - Microsoft SQL Server supporting our production applications

• Legacy systems - part of our platform runs on purpose-built hardware from an earlier generation. If working across both current and legacy infrastructure sounds interesting, that’s a good sign.

You do not need experience with all of this. You do need to be the kind of person who reads documentation and asks good questions.

What you’ll do

• Administer Windows Server and Linux systems across our production datacenters - patching, hardening, configuration, and lifecycle

• Build and maintain virtual machines and containers on our Proxmox clusters

• Investigate performance and connectivity problems using real diagnostic tools: packet capture and analysis, OS-level performance tooling, and log correlation across systems

• Monitor system and network health, and improve our monitoring coverage where it’s thin

• Configure and rack new servers, and maintain existing hardware - including physical installation of servers, cards, and cabling

• Verify backups actually restore, and participate in audits of systems and backup integrity

• Write and maintain runbooks and system documentation. We take this seriously; undocumented systems are how outages get long.

• Work with our Network Operations and Engineering teams to isolate root cause and resolve escalations

• 2+ year of hands-on systems administration in a production environment, or equivalent demonstrable experience through internships, coursework, or personal lab work. We care more about what you can show us than where you did it.

• Comfortable working in a Linux shell (Ubuntu, Debian, or similar). You don’t need depth yet, but you shouldn’t need a GUI.

• Familiarity with Windows Server - services, scheduled tasks, reading Event Viewer logs, basic networking and firewall configuration, remote administration over RDP

• Some scripting in PowerShell, Python, or Bash, and the instinct to automate a task after you’ve done it by hand three times

• Networking fundamentals: DNS, DHCP, IP addressing and subnetting, VLANs

• Clear written documentation habits

• A working system for tracking your own tasks, and a record of finishing them. Much of this job is carrying several unrelated items at once - a hardware order, a half-finished migration, an escalation, a backup that needs verifying - and getting each one across the line. We need someone who can be interrupted, handle the interruption, and then reliably return to what they set down.

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field, or equivalent hands-on experience

Preferred qualifications

• Virtualization experience - Proxmox, VMware, Hyper-V, or KVM

• Packet-level network troubleshooting (Wireshark, tcpdump)

• IIS and NGINX administration, including reverse proxy configuration and HTTP-layer troubleshooting

• ColdFusion or Lucee application administration

• Windows performance analysis with Performance Monitor and Resource Monitor

• Certificate and TLS management

• Failover clustering

• SQL Server or another relational database: query analysis, index basics, understanding what a slow query is actually waiting on

• Experience with enterprise backup and recovery - and the judgment to test restores rather than trust green checkmarks

• Any exposure to VoIP or SIP - session border controllers, PBX administration, carrier trunking, or even hobbyist Asterisk/FreePBX work

• Ceph or another distributed storage system

• Firewall administration

• Linux performance analysis tooling (top, vmstat, iostat, perf, strace)

• Professional certifications (RHCSA, Microsoft, CCNA, Security+)

• Experience in a regulated or high-security environment

Physical requirements and working conditions

These are essential functions of the role:

• Prolonged periods of sitting and working at a computer workstation

• Onsite work in datacenter environments, including occasional extended periods standing and working in server racks

• Ability to lift, move, and rack equipment weighing up to 50 pounds

• Ability to work scheduled maintenance windows outside standard business hours, including occasional overnight windows

• Ability to travel to local and out of state datacenters, approximately 10-15% of the time, most of it day trips within the Portland metro area

• Ability to pass a background check required for access to correctional facilities

• Primary office: Vancouver, WA 98682 - remote work is not an option

• Hillsboro, OR 97124 - two to three times per month, day trips

• Out of state - potentially a few trips per year

• Monday-Friday, five 8-hour shifts

• On-call: one week at a time, rotating across the Systems Operations team - including the manager. On-call participation begins after an onboarding period, once you and your team agree you’re ready.

• Most after-hours maintenance is scheduled in advance. Occasionally an urgent change has to happen outside a planned window.

Pay: $80,200.00 per year, * 401(k)

• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Health savings account
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance

Smart Communications is a dynamic technology company specializing in Corrections technology solutions. We serve county jails and state prisons nationwide, delivering innovative systems that enhance operational efficiency and security., Smart Communications builds and operates the communications infrastructure used by correctional facilities across the United States. When our systems are down, families can’t reach incarcerated loved ones - so our infrastructure is genuinely mission-critical, and we run it ourselves on hardware we own.

We’re hiring a Systems Administrator I to join our Systems Operations team. We’re a small team and we’re growing. This is the entry point to our systems administration ladder, and we mean that as an invitation rather than a warning: we expect to teach you the parts of this environment nobody arrives knowing, and we’ve built the role so that happens deliberately instead of by accident.

You’ll start with systems you can own outright and grow into the harder parts of the stack - hyperconverged virtualization, carrier-grade voice, GPU compute, and the Windows and Linux servers behind our visitation and inmate communications platforms. You’ll work alongside senior engineers, and we work day to day with our Network Operations and Engineering teams, so you’ll get exposure well beyond your own queue.

Most of this work happens at a computer, with occasional hands-on hardware and networking work in the office or datacenter. You’ll be in logs, in maintenance windows, and sometimes in the racks. If you like understanding why a system is slow rather than just restarting it, you’ll do well here.