IT Systems Administrator / Sysadmin
Runs the company’s own computing: laptops, accounts, email, the network, the office, and whoever cannot print.
Who to hire
The shape of person who does this job well — and whether you should be hiring it at all yet.
The first dedicated IT hire, and the clearest example of the split this department has: software people build the product, IT people run the company. In a software firm they are often the same person for years; in a company with offices, field staff or regulated data, they separate early and may not even sit in the same room. Identity and access management is the part that matters most and gets the least attention.
Education
No requirement. Certifications carry real weight here, unlike in software, because the knowledge is broad and verifiable.
Experience
3+ years. Ask what happens on someone’s last day — a good administrator describes an offboarding checklist from memory, because they have run it.
Vertical / domain experience
Matters by environment rather than industry: Windows and Active Directory estates, Apple fleets and Linux shops are different jobs, and regulated environments add evidence requirements.
What it pays, roughly
$72,800 median, Canada — for Technical occupations in computer and information systems, the closest occupation Statistics Canada actually measures, measured from $65,458 to $74,880 over 134,170 people. That occupation is broader than this role, so read it as an anchor, not a salary band — and note that a startup usually pays below it in cash and above it in equity.
Credentials and certifications
What exists, who issues it, and whether it means anything for this seat. A credential is evidence of a floor, never of judgment — and in a few of these roles it is a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
| Credential | Issued by | When it matters | Skiploma |
|---|---|---|---|
| CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+ | CompTIA | The standard ladder for IT, and a genuine signal at the start of a career. | — |
| Microsoft 365 and Azure administrator certifications | Microsoft | Directly relevant where the estate is Microsoft, which is most of them. | — |
| RHCSA / RHCE — Red Hat Linux administration | Red Hat | For Linux estates; performance-based. | Study |
| ITIL 4 Foundation | PeopleCert | Service-management vocabulary. Useful if you will run a helpdesk. | — |
What this role does at each stage
The same title means three different jobs depending on how much money is in the bank. Read the stage you are at, then read the next one — that is what you are hiring toward.
The founder, with a password manager and two-factor on everything.
Part time or outsourced to a managed service provider. The deliverables are small and permanent: single sign-on, device management, an offboarding checklist.
A seat at around thirty staff, or earlier with offices, field devices or compliance obligations.
Can one person hold this and something else?
The whole point of the many-hats problem: which of these jobs merge safely into one person, and which merges quietly cost you money or control.
Merges well with
- Chief Information Officer (Founders & fractional leadership)
- IT Support Technician / Help Desk Analyst
- Network Engineer / Network Administrator
- DevOps Engineer / DevOps Specialist
Systems administration, support and networking are one person in a small company and three in a large one. The useful merge with DevOps is identity: one directory, one offboarding process, for both the office and production.
Keep separate from
No conflict, but whoever grants access should not be the only person reviewing who has it.
Reading a candidate
What good looks like in an hour, and what should stop the process.
Good signals
- Describes offboarding without being prompted
- Knows what is on every device
- Documents as they go
Red flags
- Admin rights handed out freely
- No asset inventory
- Shadow systems only they understand
The same role in three kinds of company
This job changes shape depending on who is paying for it. An agency sells the hours, a contract shop delivers into someone else's estate, and a product company is building something it keeps — and the same title means something different in each.
In an agency
An agency’s IT problem is client data on staff laptops. Device encryption and a clean offboarding are the whole of it.
On a client contract
On contract, your staff will be given client accounts and VPN access; track them and return them, because an orphaned account in a client estate is their incident and your reputation.
In a product company
In a product company, IT is usually the CIO’s hat on a CTO’s head until someone fails an access review.
What this role runs on
The software categories this job lives in. Each links to our buying brief and to the research behind it.
| Category | Who the default is | What leaving costs | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workflow Automation — BPA, iPaaS & RPA | Microsoft Power Automate across the board; by segment, UiPath (RPA), ServiceNow (enterprise workflow), Workato / Boomi / MuleSoft (iPaaS) and Zapier… | Hundreds of live automations wired into production systems, each with its own credentials, connectors and edge-case logic | The research → |
| GRC & Compliance Automation | OneTrust, with Vanta and Drata owning the automation tier | The evidence history | The research → |
| DMS — Document Management Systems | Microsoft SharePoint (bundled in Microsoft 365), with OpenText and Hyland in enterprise ECM | The repository itself: years of documents with their version history, permissions, metadata, retention schedules and legal holds | The research → |