Senior System Administrator

Senior Systems Administrator

Full Time

Toronto, ON or Vancouver, BC

Zonda is redefining the future of housing. We are perfectly placed in the heart of the fast-growing real estate industry. We are making big bets on the future of real-estate, trailblazing a 2030 vision for the industry. Here at Zonda, you’ll be able to use your passion and curiosity to drive the next generation of real estate analysts, advisors, and technologists.

Zonda is seeking an experienced and highly skilled Senior Systems Administrator to join our IT team. The successful candidate will own the day-to-day operation, security, and continuous improvement of our hybrid infrastructure — spanning on-premises servers, virtualization platforms, enterprise networks, and a substantial Amazon Web Services (AWS) footprint. This is a hands-on senior technical role responsible for ensuring high availability, performance, security, and cost efficiency of the systems that power our business.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in Linux and Windows server administration, demonstrated experience operating production AWS environments, fluency in infrastructure-as-code and automation, and a strong track record of leading incident response, capacity planning, and platform modernization. The Senior Systems Administrator will mentor junior team members, lead cross-functional infrastructure projects, partner closely with security and application engineering teams, and ensure the organization meets its compliance and regulatory obligations.

What You’ll Do

System Administration

• Oversee the installation, configuration, and lifecycle maintenance of physical and virtual servers, storage arrays (SAN/NAS), and supporting infrastructure across data center, branch, and cloud environments.
• Administer enterprise Linux distributions (Amazon Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky/AlmaLinux, Ubuntu Server, SUSE) including kernel tuning, package management, systemd services, file system management (ext4, XFS, ZFS), and performance optimization.
• Administer Windows Server environments (2016/2019/2022) including Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, file/print services, Group Policy, IIS, certificate services, and PowerShell-based automation.
• Maintain virtualization platforms (VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V) including cluster operations, vMotion/Live Migration, snapshot policies, host upgrades, and capacity allocation.
• Manage legacy IIS services , app pools and relate configuration
• Manage the Windows failover cluster environment
• Plan, schedule, and execute server hardware refreshes, OS upgrades, and major migrations with minimal business disruption.
• Develop and enforce server build standards, hardening baselines (CIS Benchmarks), and configuration drift detection.

AWS Cloud Administration

• Support the design, deployment, operation, and continuously improve production AWS environments across multiple accounts and regions
• Work with the Senior Cloud Engineer to administer core compute services,
• Assist in managing AWS networking foundations
• Assist in administering AWS storage services
• Assist in the operations of managed database services
• Assist in implementation and governance of AWS Identity and Access Management
• Assist in configuration and maintenance of AWS security services
• Assist the Senior Cloud Engineer in utilizing operational tooling such as AWS Systems Manager (SSM)
• Support the implementation of observability across AWS workloads
• Support AWS cost management and FinOps activities
• Help manage and govern Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) including hardened base images
• Architect and validate disaster recovery patterns in AWS

Security Management

• Implement, manage, and continuously improve security controls including intrusion detection/prevention systems, endpoint detection and response (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon), DLP, multi-factor authentication, and privileged access management.
• Lead vulnerability management activities: scanning, prioritization, patching coordination, and verification across servers, network devices, and cloud workloads.
• Conduct regular security audits, configuration reviews, and access recertifications; remediate findings and track to closure.
• Manage public key infrastructure (PKI), certificate lifecycles, and integration with ACM and on-premises CAs.

Virtualization Management

• Maintain and optimize on-premises virtualization platforms (VMware vSphere, Hyper-V,), including hypervisor patching, cluster capacity, vSAN/storage policies, and DR replication.

Backup & Disaster Recovery

• Develop, document, and test enterprise backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity plans for both on-premises and cloud workloads.
• Operate enterprise backup platforms (Veeam, DPM, AWS Backup) and verify backup success, retention compliance, and restore integrity.
• Conduct scheduled DR exercises (tabletop and live failover); produce after-action reports and drive identified improvements.
• Define and report on Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) by service tier.

User Support & Incident Response

• Provide advanced (Tier 3) technical support and act as escalation point for complex infrastructure incidents.
• Lead major incident response: drive triage, technical bridge calls, communications, and resolution; conduct blameless post-incident reviews and track corrective actions.
• Participate in a 24×7 on-call rotation for production support.

Automation & Scripting

• Develop and maintain automation in PowerShell, Python, and Bash to eliminate manual toil, codify runbooks, and standardize routine operations.

Software, Patch & Configuration Management

• Operate enterprise patching programs across Windows, Linux, and AWS workloads using SSM Patch Manager, WSUS/SCCM, and equivalent tooling; meet defined SLAs for critical and high-severity vulnerabilities.
• Maintain software inventory and license compliance.
• Manage golden image pipelines and ensure patched, hardened images are available for new deployments.

Compliance & Documentation

• Maintain comprehensive system and architecture documentation, runbooks, and recovery procedures.
• Support audits and assessments for ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST 800-53/CSF, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, and other applicable frameworks; prepare evidence and remediate findings.
• Implement and validate technical controls aligned to the AWS Well-Architected Framework and the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark.

Project Management & Leadership

• Lead infrastructure projects end-to-end: requirements, design, vendor evaluation, implementation, and handoff.
• Coordinate with third-party vendors, managed service providers, and AWS technical account teams.
• Contribute to the technology roadmap and capital/operational budgeting.
• Mentor and develop junior administrators; conduct peer reviews of designs, code, and changes.

Performance Monitoring & Reporting

• Implement and maintain enterprise monitoring and observability stacks (Nagios, Site 24x7, SCOM, Grafana, Prometheus, CloudWatch) with meaningful service-level indicators and alert thresholds.
• Produce regular reports on system availability, capacity utilization, security posture, and service-level objective (SLO) attainment.
• Drive capacity planning across compute, storage, network, and cloud spend horizons of 3, 6, and 12 months.

Who You Are

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years of progressive systems administration experience in an enterprise environment, with at least 3+ years of hands-on production AWS experience.
• Expert-level administration of both Windows Server and enterprise Linux distributions, including hardening, performance tuning, and large-scale automation.
• Demonstrated production experience with core AWS services: EC2, VPC, S3, IAM, RDS, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Systems Manager, Route 53, KMS, and either ECS or EKS.
• Working experience designing and maintaining multi-account AWS Organizations environments, including SCPs and cross-account access patterns.
• Strong networking foundation: TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, BGP, routing, switching, VPN, TLS, load balancing, and packet-level troubleshooting.
• Proficiency in scripting and automation with PowerShell, Python, and Bash.
• Experience administering relational and NoSQL databases (SQL Server, MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, DynamoDB, MongoDB).
• In-depth knowledge of Active Directory, Group Policy, Entra ID/Azure AD, and modern identity solutions (Okta, Ping, AWS IAM Identity Center, SAML, OIDC).
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and root-cause-analysis skills with the discipline to document findings and drive systemic fixes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to explain complex technical issues to executive, peer, and end-user audiences.
• Experience leading projects, mentoring engineers, and operating effectively in a cross-functional environment.
• Relevant certifications strongly preferred: AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate, AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional), AWS Certified Advanced Networking or Security – Specialty, Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator, CompTIA Security+, CCNA/CCNP, or CISSP.

Preferred Qualifications

• Production experience with Kubernetes (EKS) including cluster lifecycle, Helm, ingress controllers, service meshes, and cluster autoscaling.
• Experience with DevOps tooling and CI/CD pipelines: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, AWS CodePipeline, ArgoCD, or similar.
• Experience with configuration management and IaC ecosystems beyond Terraform: Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Salt, or Pulumi.
• Familiarity with ITIL service management practices (incident, problem, change, configuration, and release management).
• Experience with containerization (Docker, containerd, Kubernetes) and image security scanning (Trivy, Snyk, ECR scanning).
• Experience with enterprise backup platforms (Veeam, DPM) and AWS Backup at scale.
• Experience with FinOps practices, AWS cost optimization
• Exposure to regulated environments (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2 Type II, FedRAMP, ITAR, or similar).
• AWS Professional or Specialty certifications

Why People Love Working Here

• We offer meaningful work and opportunities for career growth
• Competitive Salary
• Comprehensive benefit package (Medical, Dental, Vision)
• 100% Company paid Life Insurance, Long Term Disability, and Short-Term Disability coverage
• 401k with company match
• Paid vacation and general holidays
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Live Meditation Sessions
• Employee Recognition Platform
• Virtual Wellness Program
• 100% Hybrid – and always will be!
• Visionary Leadership Team