Systems Administrator Market September 2022
Infrastructure Engineers and System Administrators still remain the backbone of many organisations, in particular Banking, Fintech, Finance, Insurance and Tech sectors, responsible for driving and managing troubleshooting issues, licensing, and updating hardware and software assets across the organisation.
The scale of the organisation can often determine if an organisation opts for a Windows or Linux environment, with a pool of plentiful candidates in both. The traditional Windows Engineer skill set has evolved over the past 12-24 months with a broader technical skillset now required, including strong server knowledge, troubleshooting, networking, firewalls, automation/scripting and some cloud.
As we see many organisations make the move from on-prem to Cloud (Private and Public), this is definitely an advantageous skill set to hold within the current market. Many candidates are now upskilling in their spare time by completing AWS and Microsoft accreditations, which are also looked at as favourable by future employers. Some of the most common courses are:
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
- AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C01)
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (SOA-C02)
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure – Fundamentals Exam AZ-900
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator – Associate Exam AZ-104
Azure and AWS remain the market leaders, with several organisations now opting to build their own private cloud as it is more cost-effective to replicate similar services from AWS and Azure, for example, EC2 and creating their own internal cloud storage.
We are continuing to see a steady demand for strong Linux Administrators as the market for DevOps Engineers continues to grow and many Linux System Administrators have gravitated in this direction as a new career path. This has left a demand for core Linux skillsets in the market; however, it has been easily replenished with an annual group of graduates entering the market having completed technical degrees from across Ireland and Europe, thus growing the next generation of Linux Engineers/Administrators within Ireland.
Improving processes and automation remains high on the agenda for 2022 for many organisations and with this, the desire to have strong scripting capabilities is increasingly popular for many – in particular Python, PowerShell, Bash, Shell or similar.
Salaries have remained consistent within this space with the exception of more technical candidates with strong automation and scripting experience.