Please note that a strong internal candidate has been identified.

Description:

The University of Saskatchewan is a world leader in water and food security, vaccine development and infectious diseases, and human, animal, and environmental health. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) division provides innovative and disciplined support and expertise as an integral part of ensuring USask becomes the university the world needs. The division is also committed to fostering a workplace culture that promotes diversity, collaboration, and professional growth.

USask provides employees with many benefits such as flexible work arrangements; access to the university’s recreation services; ongoing professional development and mentorship and a comprehensive benefits and pension program.

Primary Purpose:

The Infrastructure Lead coordinates the deployment, ongoing support and administration of Systems and ARC infrastructure, including server virtualization, large storage systems, compute farms, backup servers, and tape libraries, which underpin the teaching, learning, research and administrative goals of the university. The Infrastructure Lead ensures that the compute, storage and backup resources are highly available, effectively administered, patched, secured, repaired and maintained. In consultation with other ICT teams, the Infrastructure Lead guides the implementation of technical solutions to provide stable IT infrastructure services to the University.

Nature of Work:

This position is involved in the coordination of effective design, operation and enhancement of the institutional virtual infrastructure, advanced research computing infrastructure, storage and backup infrastructure, including urgent maintenance, implementation of highly available and redundant designs for storage and compute services, as well as the long-term analysis of future directions for virtual and physical infrastructure

The role will include leading a team of Infrastructure and Systems Administrators responsible for hardware installation and maintenance and software installation and configuration. It requires keen attention to detail and careful, measured actions that minimize risks associated with errors that compromise data. The position requires the ability to work effectively both independently and as a collaborative team member, and to appropriately prioritize response to a wide variety of time-sensitive tasks. Periodic evening or weekend work is involved, which will be balanced with flex time considerations.

Typical Duties/Accountabilities:

• Ensure the architecture of the institution’s virtualization, advanced research computing, storage, and backup systems provide a high level of reliability, performance, integrity, and security;
• Lead a team of colleagues that work collaboratively with to provide:
• Communicate progress and issues regularly with colleagues, stakeholders, clients and the ICT leadership team;
• Coordinate Infrastructure security and disaster preparedness with ICT Security as well as participate in agency audits.
• Provide effective change management practices to optimize the benefits and minimize disruption to the Universities teaching, research and administration systems;
• Ensure the team performs at a high level by effectively communicating expectations, providing feedback, and participating in coaching and mentorship;
• Lead the proposal, discussion and execution of services;
• Ensure liability and risk are responsibly mitigated by remaining current with best practices, current auditing practices, and managing contract and licensing relationships.

Qualifications:

Education:

A University degree in Computer Science. A graduate-level degree would be consider an asset. An equivalent combination of education and experience will be considered.

Experience:

• Seven years’ experience leading a team managing ICT infrastructure.
• Large-scale SAN storage architecture, preferably at the Petabyte-scale;
• Enterprise Backup architecture, preferably at the Petabyte-scale;
• Demonstrated ability to contribute to the design and implementation of new virtualization, storage and backup systems;
• Scripting to automate routine tasks preferably using Python and/or Powershell.

Familiarity with:

• Management of Enterprise solutions including VMware vCenter, Bright cluster manager, Veeam, Pure1, IBM Storage Protect or similar solutions;
• Datacenter networking, firewalling and physical connectivity;
• Knowledge of Dell and Lenovo Servers, including their central management solutions;
• Experience with iSCSI storage networks design and its effective usage;
• Recent work experience at a senior level in system administration at a post-secondary institution and supporting a large (10,000 or more) user population;
• Experience with bright cluster manager in large clusters with multiple hardware type as well as multiple stakeholders would be an asset.
• Experience in Vmware administration preferred in our highly virtualized environment would be an asset.
• Experience as a Unix administrator would be an asset.

Skills:

• Ability to provide technical leadership to a team;
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills;
• Effective interpersonal and communication skills both written and verbal;
• Proven ability to work on multiple projects and with competing priorities.

This position is in scope of the Administrative and Supervisory Personnel Association (ASPA).

Department: Information and Communications Technology Research Library & Data Centre
Status: Permanent
Employment Group: ASPA
Full Time Equivalent (FTE): 1.0
Salary: The salary range, based on 1.0 FTE, is $87,266.00 - 145,353.00 per annum. The starting salary will be commensurate with education and experience.
Salary Family (if applicable): Information Technology
Salary Phase/Band: Phase 3
Posted Date: 8/11/2025
Closing Date: 8/17/2025 at 6:00 pm CST
Number of Openings: 1
Work Location: On Campus

The University is committed to employment equity, diversity, and inclusion, and are proud to support career opportunities for Indigenous peoples to reflect the community we serve. We are dedicated to recruiting individuals who will enrich our work and learning environments. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority. We are committed to providing accommodations to those with a disability or medical necessity. If you require an accommodation to participate in the recruitment process, please notify us and we will work together on the accommodation request. We continue to grow our partnerships with Indigenous communities across the province, nationally, and internationally and value the unique perspective that Indigenous employees provide to strengthen these relationships. Verification of Indigenous Membership/Citizenship at the University of Saskatchewan is led and determined by the deybwewin | taapwaywin | tapwewin: Indigenous Truth policy and Standing Committee in accordance with the processes developed to enact the policy. Successful candidates that assert Indigenous membership/citizenship will be asked to complete the verification process of Indigenous membership/citizenship with documentation. The University of Saskatchewan’s main campus is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis. We pay our respects to the First Nations and Métis ancestors of this place and reaffirm our relationship with one another. Together, we are uplifting Indigenization to a place of prominence at the University of Saskatchewan.