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

Salary: $94,620.00 - $127,248.00 Annually
Location : Thurston County - Olympia, WA
Job Type: Full Time - Permanent
Remote Employment: Flexible/Hybrid
Job Number:
Department: Dept of Children, Youth, and Families
Division: Information Technology
Opening Date: 10/08/2026
Closing Date: 10/15/2026 11:59 PM Pacific

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

Location: Thurston County - Olympia, WashingtonCloses: 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.
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.

More than Just a Paycheck!
Employee benefits are not just about the kind of services you get, they are also about how much you may have to pay out of pocket. Washington State offers one of the most competitive benefits packages in the nation.

We understand that your life revolves around more than just your career. Like everyone, your first priority is ensuring that you and your family will maintain health and financial security. That's why choice is a key component of our benefits package. We have a selection of health and retirement plans, paid leave, staff training and other compensation benefits that you can mix and match to meet your current and future needs.

Read about our benefits:
The following information describes typical benefits available for full-time employees who are expected to work more than six months. Actual benefits may vary by appointment type or be prorated for other than full-time work (e.g. part-time); view the job posting for benefits details for job types other than full-time.

Note: If the position offers benefits which differ from the following, the job posting should include the specific benefits.

Insurance Benefits
Employees and their families are covered by medical (including vision), dental and basic life insurance. There are multiple medical plans with affordable monthly premiums that offer coverage throughout the state.

Staff are eligible to enroll each year in a medical flexible spending account which enables them to use tax-deferred dollars toward their health care expenses. Employees are also covered by basic life and long-term disability insurance, with the option to purchase additional coverage amounts.

To view premium rates, coverage choice in your area and how to enroll, please visit the Public Employees Benefits Board (PEBB) website. The Washington Wellness program from the Health Care Authority works with PEBB to support our workplace wellness programs.

Dependent care assistance allows the employee to save pre-tax dollars for a child or elder care expenses.

Other insurance coverage for auto, boat, home, and renter insurance is available through payroll deduction.

The Washington State Employee Assistance Program promotes the health and well-being of employees.

Retirement and Deferred Compensation
State Employees are members of the Washington Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS). New employees have the option of two employer contributed retirement programs. For additional information, check out the Department of Retirement Systems' web site.

Employees also have the ability to participate in the Deferred Compensation Program (DCP). This is a supplemental retirement savings program (similar to an IRA) that allows you control over the amount of pre-tax salary dollars you defer as well as the flexibility to choose between multiple investment options.

Social Security
All state employees are covered by the federal Social Security and Medicare systems. The state and the employee pay an equal amount into the system.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness
If you are employed by a government or not-for-profit organization, and meet the qualifying criteria, you may be eligible to receive student loan forgiveness under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

Holidays
Full-time and part-time employees are entitled to paid holidays and one paid personal holiday per calendar year.

Note: Employees who are members of certain Unions may be entitled to additional personal leave day(s), please refer to position specific Collective Bargaining Agreements for more information.

Full-time employees who work full monthly schedules qualify for holiday compensation if they are employed before the holiday and are in pay status for at least 80 nonovertime hours during the month of the holiday; or for the entire work shift preceding the holiday.

Part-time employees who are in pay status during the month of the holiday qualify for the holiday on a pro-rata basis. Compensation for holidays (including personal holiday) will be proportionate to the number of hours in pay status in the month to that required for full-time employment, excluding all holiday hours. Pay status includes hours worked and time on paid leave.

Sick Leave
Full-time employees earn eight hours of sick leave per month. Overtime eligible employees who are in pay status for less than 80 hours per month, earn a monthly proportionate to the number of hours in pay status, in the month to that required for full-time employment. Overtime exempt employees who are in pay status for less than 80 hours per month do not earn a monthly accrual of sick leave.

Sick leave accruals for part-t