Pr. Storage Administrator

Position Summary:

The Principal Storage Administrator serves as VUIT's recognized subject matter expert for enterprise storage and backup services across on-premises and cloud environments. Working under minimal supervision, this role independently manages highly complex operational, engineering, and solution delivery challenges involving storage availability, performance, scalability, data protection, and recovery. The Principal Storage Administrator develops and refines operational standards, technical methodologies, and solution designs within the storage domain; leads complex implementations and service improvements; and provides advanced guidance to colleagues and infrastructure teams. The role improves service quality, resilience, operational efficiency, and user experience through expert analysis, engineering, continuous improvement, and resolution of the university's most complex storage and backup challenges.

About the Work Unit:

Vanderbilt University Information Technology is a human-centric organization that advances our university by delivering innovative solutions and frictionless experiences through collaboration.

Key Functions and Expected Performance:

Storage Operations, Engineering & Platform Stewardship

• Serve as the technical lead for complex SAN, NAS, object, and cloud-based storage environments, ensuring reliable, scalable, and efficient service delivery.
• Design and implement complex storage, backup, replication, and recovery solutions that align with established architectural standards and operational requirements.
• Lead major storage lifecycle activities, including platform upgrades, migrations, consolidations, refreshes, and service modernization efforts.
• Develop and maintain advanced operational standards, configuration baselines, automation, and support procedures that improve consistency and maintainability.
• Evaluate platform performance and operational practices, implementing improvements that enhance availability, scalability, and service quality.

Reliability, Monitoring & Incident Management

• Lead investigation and resolution of the most complex storage, performance, replication, backup, and recovery incidents across multiple infrastructure domains.
• Perform advanced root-cause analysis and implement sustainable corrective actions that reduce recurring issues and operational risk.
• Establish monitoring approaches, alerting thresholds, and operational practices that improve proactive issue detection and response effectiveness.
• Drive service reliability improvements through trend analysis, incident reviews, and operational optimization initiatives.
• Provide expert guidance during major incident response and recovery activities to minimize service disruption and business impact.

Data Protection, Security & Compliance

• Oversee advanced data protection operations, including replication, backup, recovery, retention, and disaster recovery processes aligned with university requirements.
• Improve recovery readiness and resilience through testing, validation, and continuous process enhancement.
• Ensure storage services operate in alignment with university security requirements, data classifications, and applicable regulatory obligations.
• Lead technical analysis and remediation of storage-related security, compliance, and audit findings.
• Develop and promote best practices for data protection, encryption, access management, and operational risk reduction.

Collaboration, Technical Leadership & Knowledge Sharing

• Serve as the primary storage and backup subject matter expert for infrastructure, security, research computing, application, database, and cloud teams.
• Provide mentorship, technical coaching, and knowledge transfer to administrators and engineers to strengthen organizational capabilities.
• Influence technical decisions and implementation approaches through expertise, analysis, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Develop and maintain advanced operational documentation, standards, troubleshooting guidance, and knowledge resources.
• Facilitate effective coordination and communication during complex operational initiatives and cross-functional projects.

Capacity Management, Optimization & Vendor Engagement

• Analyze long-term capacity, utilization, performance, and growth trends to identify operational risks and improvement opportunities.
• Develop reporting and operational metrics that support informed decision-making and service optimization.
• Lead vendor engagement for complex troubleshooting, critical incidents, escalation management, and platform optimization activities.
• Recommend and implement operational improvements based on technology capabilities, performance analysis, and emerging industry practices.
• Coordinate complex migration, consolidation, and decommissioning efforts to ensure reliable service delivery and minimal operational disruption.

Working Conditions and Operational Requirements:

Hybrid Work Arrangement:

This position is eligible for a hybrid work schedule, combining on‑campus and remote work. Employees are expected to be on site at least one day per week and for activities that require in‑person presence, such as team collaboration, service delivery, or campus events. Specific on‑site expectations are determined in coordination with the supervisor and must align with departmental needs and institutional policy. Remote work privileges may be revoked at any time.

On-call Responsibilities:

The position includes rotating on-call duties for after-hours incident response and requests.

Supervisory Relationships:

This position may provide technical leadership, mentoring, and guidance to other administrators and engineers. The position may have formal supervisory responsibility. This position reports administratively and functionally to the Director of Open Systems and Storage.

Education and Certifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and directly relevant experience is necessary

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field is preferred

• Advanced storage, backup, cloud, or infrastructure certifications are preferred

Experience and Skills:

• 8-10 years of relevant, progressive experience administering enterprise storage, backup, and data protection platforms in complex environments is necessary

• Deep expertise in SAN, NAS, object storage, replication, backup, recovery, and disaster recovery technologies is necessary

• Advanced ability to analyze and resolve complex storage, performance, availability, and data protection issues across multiple infrastructure domains is necessary

• Experience designing and implementing enterprise storage and data protection solutions within established architectural frameworks is necessary

• Demonstrated experience developing operational standards, automation, support practices, and service improvements that enhance reliability and maintainability is necessary

• Strong communication, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration skills with the ability to influence technical outcomes without formal authority are necessary

• Demonstrated commitment to VUIT’s Guiding Principles is necessary

Information Technology’s Guiding Principles:

• Trust and Respect- VUIT cultivates a community built on trust, mutual respect, and inclusivity, where all members feel valued and supported. We prioritize honesty, dignity, empathy, and a willingness to listen and understand.

• Professionalism- VUIT strives to maintain a culture of maturity, accountability, and integrity to best represent the University and self. Have a sense of humility and poise in your work and daily interactions.

• Collaborate- VUIT commits to being inclusive in solution design where we value sharing within and partnering across the university. We are intentional about including our colleagues and preventing silos.

• Bias-to-Action- VUIT is seen as a changemaker by exhibiting a decisive, self-starter, take-action approach with a willingness to make decisions without excessive deliberation. Personal initiative is recognized as a key part of the creative process.

• Communicate- Communication (written, verbal and non-verbal), within and outside VUIT, is open, thoughtful, welcoming, clear, proactive, concise yet complete, always honest, and delivered kindly.

• Innovate- VUIT pledges to be bold and challenge the status quo by inspiring a culture of creativity that promotes growth and advancement for the university.

• Celebrate Each Other- We are intentional in showing appreciation for the work of others by valuing and acknowledging meaningful contributions at all levels of the organization.

• Optimize- VUIT will practice continuous and thoughtful optimization of our solutions and services to increase our human and technological capacity. Capacity drives innovation.