IT System Administrator Senior/Specialist (IT Disaster Recovery Administrator)

Description

Our vision is to ensure that “Washington state’s children and youth grow up safe and healthy —thriving physically, emotionally, and academically, nurtured by family and community."

Job Title: IT System Administrator Senior/Specialist (IT Disaster Recovery Administrator

Location: Thurston County – Olympia, Washington
Closes: October 15th, 2026
Salary: $94,620.00 - $127,248.00 Monthly

Join a team where your IT expertise directly supports the continuity and resilience of essential services for Washingtonians. As an IT Disaster Recovery Administrator, you will play a critical role in protecting, recovering, and restoring the technology services and data that support essential business operations. You will help develop and maintain disaster recovery capabilities across on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 cloud environments. This position works at the intersection of disaster recovery, enterprise infrastructure, cloud technology, data protection, cybersecurity, and business continuity. You will collaborate with infrastructure, security, application, and business teams to ensure recovery requirements are understood, documented, tested, and continuously improved. If you enjoy solving complex technology challenges, working across organizational boundaries, and helping an organization become more resilient and prepared for disruption, this is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact while working with modern enterprise technologies.

Click here to learn more about DCYF.

The Opportunity:

The IT Disaster Recovery Administrator is responsible for helping ensure that critical technology services can be recovered effectively following a disruption, outage, cybersecurity incident, or other emergencies. You will contribute to disaster recovery planning and implementation across hybrid technology environments, including on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 services. The position requires a strong understanding of enterprise infrastructure, backup and recovery technologies, system dependencies, recovery sequencing, and operational readiness. You will work closely with technical and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into practical recovery strategies and ensure those strategies are documented, tested, measured, and improved over time.

Some of what you will get to do:

• Develop, maintain, and administer disaster recovery plans, runbooks, procedures, and technical documentation for enterprise systems and services.
• Document system configurations, dependencies, requirements, recovery sequencing, and other information necessary to support effective restoration.
• Monitor enterprise backup operations, analyze failures, troubleshoot issues, and implement corrective actions to maintain data integrity and recoverability.
• Administer and support backup and recovery technologies across on-premises and cloud environments.
• Execute, coordinate, and validate system, application, and data restoration processes.
• Implement and maintain secure and immutable backup solutions in alignment with agency policies, cybersecurity requirements, and data protection standards.
• Support recovery capabilities for Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 cloud services, as applicable to agency systems and business requirements.
• Plan, coordinate, and execute disaster recovery tests, technical recovery exercises, and other operational readiness activities.
• Validate recovery procedures and system functionality following restoration activities.
• Evaluate disaster recovery test results, document outcomes, identify gaps, and implement corrective actions to improve recovery effectiveness.
• Maintain operational readiness metrics, reports, recovery status information, and supporting documentation.
• Maintain recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), system prioritization information, and other recovery requirements.
• Work with business and technical stakeholders to align recovery strategies with business requirements, system criticality, and service dependencies.
• Identify opportunities to improve disaster recovery capabilities, resiliency, recoverability, and operational processes.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, security, application, cloud, and business teams during recovery planning, testing, and actual recovery events.

Required Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, or a closely related field.

OR

Four (4) years of progressively responsible experience in IT systems administration, infrastructure engineering, disaster recovery, or information security, including administration of enterprise systems and services.

AND

• The ability to take action to learn and grow
• The ability to take action to meet the needs of others.

*Experience can be used in lieu of education.

Additional required Qualifications:

• Experience administering or supporting enterprise backup and recovery solutions, including configuration, monitoring, and restoration processes.
• Experience developing, maintaining, or executing disaster recovery plans, runbooks, or operational procedures for IT systems.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional technical teams in a matrixed environment to support system operations, recovery efforts, or incident response.
• Demonstrated knowledge of enterprise IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking, virtualization, and/or cloud platforms.
• Working knowledge of disaster recovery principles and practices, including recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), and business impact analysis (BIA).
• Experience supporting compliance, audit, or regulatory requirements related to IT systems, data protection, or operational resilience.

Desirable/Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in a Washington State government IT environment.
• Experience administering disaster recovery solutions for enterprise or hybrid (cloud/on premises) environments.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure and related backup and recovery capabilities.
• Familiarity with Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) disaster recovery and infrastructure standards.
• Industry certifications such as Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP), Microsoft, Azure, VMware, or ITIL Foundation (or higher).

How do I apply?
Complete your applicant profile on careers.wa.gov and attach the following documents:

• Current resume detailing experience and education.
• Letter of Interest that details how you meet the qualifications for the position.

Supplemental Information:

The Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) is committed to Washington’s children and youth growing up safe, healthy, and thriving. We invite all candidates to join us in our mission to create a diverse and equitable workplace that reflects the communities we serve. If you are excited about this role but you believe that your education and/or experience might not align perfectly with every qualification in the job posting, we encourage you to apply anyway.

The Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, national origin, honorably discharged veteran or military status, or the presence of any sensory, mental, or physical disability or the use of a trained service animal by a person with a disability.

This recruitment may be used to fill multiple vacancies.

For more information about this position or if you need an accommodation throughout the application/interview process, please contact DCYF recruiter. If you're experiencing technical difficulties creating, accessing or completing your application, call NEOGOV toll-free at (855) 524-5627 or [email protected]. Persons needing accommodation in the application process or this announcement in an alternative format may call the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at 360-664-1960.

Applicants who meet the minimum qualifications and wish to claim Veteran's Preference MUST attach a copy of their DD214, NGB Form 22 or Predischarge Certification (issued not more than 120 days prior to End of Term of Service (ETS) by date of submission). If claiming preference based on Predischarge Certification, individual will be required to provide their official discharge documentation, such as a DD form 214, NGB form 22, or equivalent, within 30 days after the date of discharge. Please blackout (redact) the social security number before attaching any documents. For additional information on Veteran's Preference and guidance on how to determine if you are eligible, click here.

DCYF participates in the federal E-Verify program. The selected candidate must provide proof of identity and authorization to work in the United States, consistent with E-Verify requirements, on their first day of employment.