Senior Systems Administrator

Date Posted: 07/31/2026
Req ID: 49683
Faculty/Division: Library
Department: Scholars Portal
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00045093
Existing Vacancy: Yes

Description:

About us:

The University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) system is the largest academic library in Canada and is ranked in the top five among peer institutions in North America. The system comprises 40 libraries located across three university campuses: St. George, Mississauga, and Scarborough. This diverse and extensive network of college libraries, special collections, and specialized information centres plays a pivotal role in supporting the teaching, scholarly, and research needs of nearly 100,000 students enrolled in a wide array of graduate, professional, and undergraduate programs.

The library system provides access to millions of resources in various formats, including electronic, print, audio-visual, data and geospatial materials. UTL also boasts impressive holdings of archival material and substantial digital collections, securely preserved in the libraries' data centre. The staff at UTL are integral to the academic and scholarly enterprise, working closely with faculty and students to support their teaching, learning, and research requirements. They are subject matter experts; they are skilled in research data management, collections, statistics, GIS, metadata, digital preservation, scholarly communications, copyright, teaching, knowledge synthesis, open access and much more. Our work is grounded in our commitment to support equity, diversity, and inclusion.

UTL continuously evolves to meet the changing academic priorities and pressures at the University and within the broader landscape of higher education.


Your opportunity:

Scholars Portal, a department of the University of Toronto Libraries, develops and operates shared digital infrastructure and technology services that support university libraries in Ontario and across Canada. Through a portfolio of trusted, community-governed services, Scholars Portal enables research, preservation, and scholarly communication while advancing collaborative, sustainable approaches to research infrastructure. The Scholars Portal team of librarians, developers, and systems staff supports services spanning research and member services, data and geospatial services, digital collections, and digital preservation.

Under the direction of the Associate Director, Systems and Technical Operations, the Senior Systems Administrator-Scholaris will support the infrastructure and operational environment that underpins Scholaris, Canada's national shared institutional repository service. This role is responsible for the administration, monitoring, maintenance, and continuous improvement of the systems and platforms that support Scholaris, with a focus on service reliability, security, performance, scalability, and operational sustainability.

The incumbent will work closely with systems team members, developers, librarians, and external partners on server provisioning, configuration management, deployment support, patching, monitoring, backup and recovery, and disaster preparedness. They will contribute to the automation of routine operational tasks, support CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices, and participate in the planning and implementation of platform upgrades and service enhancements.

As part of a collaborative team, the Senior Systems Administrator will help maintain and improve a robust, highly available repository service that supports institutions across Canada. The incumbent will troubleshoot complex infrastructure and application issues, contribute to incident response and root cause analysis, and work with colleagues to ensure Scholaris continues to evolve as a secure, reliable, and sustainable national research infrastructure.

Your Responsibilities will Include:

• Designing and implementing new operating systems and subsystems server software
• Planning and implementing expansion and enhancement of IT networks independently
• Analyzing, troubleshooting and testing highly complex systems
• Developing and updating architectural framework for highly complex and confidential university-wide IT systems

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or an equivalent combination of education and experience
• Minimum five (5) years of relevant experience in systems administration, infrastructure operations, or platform support
• Extensive experience administering and supporting Linux-based production environments
• Experience deploying, maintaining, and troubleshooting highly available, resilient, and secure systems
• Experience supporting distributed systems and services in a production environment
• Strong knowledge of operating systems administration, networking, storage, and core infrastructure concepts
• Experience with configuration management, automation, and infrastructure management tools (e.g., Ansible, Chef, or equivalent)
• Experience administering web servers, reverse proxies, and load balancing technologies (e.g., Apache, Nginx, HAProxy, or equivalent)
• Experience with containerization and related platform technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, or equivalent), preferably in on-premises environments
• Experience supporting virtualization and infrastructure platforms using open-source technologies (e.g., KVM, OpenStack, or equivalent)
• Experience supporting databases and backend services in a production environment, including writing and maintaining SQL scripts; familiarity with technologies such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ, or Elasticsearch is an asset
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical colleagues
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively in a team environment, and to contribute to documentation, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Accountable
• Efficient
• Goal oriented
• Organized
• Responsible
• Self-directed
• Team player

Notes:

• This is a two (2) year term contract.

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.

Job descriptions are available upon request for internal applicants.