May 2020 – Present
Systems Administrator
Berkshire Associates, LLC · Columbia, MD
One of a three-person IT team supporting 80 employees. Own core infrastructure, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Microsoft 365 administration in a SOC 2 environment.
- Administer core infrastructure services across on-premises and Azure environments: Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy, and Microsoft Entra ID.
- Deploy, configure, and maintain Azure Virtual Desktop environments for secure remote access, including session host lifecycle management, third-level troubleshooting, and performance tuning.
- Administer Office 365 across Exchange Online, Teams, Teams Phones, Intune, OneDrive, and SharePoint: retention and security policies, Teams and device policies, and enterprise voice routing and number assignment.
- Install, configure, and maintain physical and virtual Windows and Hyper-V servers; execute Exchange and Windows Server upgrades off-hours to eliminate user downtime.
- Maintain system security and stability by proactively patching Windows servers and Sophos XG firewalls.
- Perform quarterly user entitlement and access reviews with DumpSec and Permissions Reporter, enforcing role-based access controls over confidential client data.
- Partner with external auditors on annual SOC 2 walkthroughs and artifact collection.
- Maintain server and cloud backup strategy using Arcserve and CloudAlly, validating restores.
- Automate routine administration with PowerShell: user provisioning and deprovisioning, bulk Microsoft 365 changes, and recurring reporting.
- Monitor server and cloud performance using Pingdom, ActiveXperts, and Splunk; respond to alerts and incidents, including after hours.
- Support project-based initiatives including a Salesforce migration, running sandbox UAT with the vendor and an internal Sales, Product, and IT team.
- Own onboarding for all new staff and maintain documentation used to cross-train IT team members.