Amanda Dahl

Age: 34

Current Employer: Citi 

Bagged this job by: After ten years building a career as a Unix and Linux systems administrator in a number of industries, Citigroup recruited me to introduce a Linux support model to a back office trade floor Production systems administration team.

After achieving Linux integration, I worked my way from systems administrator to building and managing infrastructure teams across EMEA. The key to gaining increased responsibility has been to volunteer for higher profile projects and stretch assignments that extend across the wider organisation. 

Other ways in: Most managers in the organisation have started in some technical role and been promoted internally after displaying leadership skills. For example, the former head of the Unix systems administration department started in the Citigroup graduate programme as a network administrator. 

Hunt out similar posts: If you are a systems administrator looking to transition into management, it can be difficult to get recruited straight into a managerial position. Get recruited for a senior SA position and express interest in management early on in the position.

Display leadership skills and get involved with projects that extend outside of your group, in order to raise your profile with senior management. Even if you're a serious technologist, know the business you support. Because a system may be new and technically interesting, but it won't mean anything unless it's relevant to what the business is trying to achieve.

Highs: Building a new team of 10 systems administrators in our Belfast office who turned out to be some of the most skilled technologists I've ever known, and who have achieved 99.981 per cent average platform availability (16.8 hours downtime in a year) on an estate of 200+ servers, supporting 20+ electronic trading and foreign exchange applications. 

Lows: Coping with the tough cost-saving measures which the organisation has had to enact in response to the current economy. This involves tracking several concurrent infrastructure programmes for consolidation, virtualisation and asset optimisation.

Happiness rating: When we passed our last audit with no major issues? 10 out of 10. When having to explain why someone made a typo which caused a severity one outage? 1 out of 10.

Qualifications: I have no formal degree in Computer Science. I studied Political Economy at the University of California at Berkeley and worked my way up by learning on the job. However, I'm a Redhat Certified Technician and have qualifications in PRINCE2 and ITIL®.

Other training: Other than the technical, project management and operations training, I have had training in managing remote teams, leadership, effective communication, conducting effective interviews and managing difficult conversations. The soft skills can be just as important as the technical knowledge.

Path trodden:
Citigroup - Vice President - January 2008 to present
Citigroup - Assistant Vice President - September 2005 to January 2008
Inpharmatica - Senior Systems Administrator - 2001-2005
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories - Systems Manager - 2000-2001
Pogo.com (Electronic Arts) - Unix Systems Administrator - 1998-2000
MSCI Barra - Unix Systems Administrator - 1995-1998

Career mantra: If you see an opportunity, raise your hand and volunteer for it, but make sure to deliver on what you promise to do.

Currently working on: Planning a data centre migration. 

What I do: Effective and experienced IT infrastructure manager who has delivered a wide range of IT infrastructure rollouts and managed teams within SME and large blue chip organisations. Skilled at leading complex technical deployments and managing technical teams, with proven experience in delivering a high quality of service to clients as well as managing infrastructure operations to a high standard.

Currently Infrastructure Manager for Global Markets Unix Administration in a client-facing role, focusing on managing the environment from a hardware perspective. Advising on Solaris/Linux and other related hardware standards, managing the environment from a capacity perspective and working closely with application support and development managers.

• client relationship management;
• inventory and environment management;
• financials management and budget cycles;
• process improvement and optimisation;
• IT infrastructure planning and project management;
• compliance and controls;
• DR and contingency planning;
• problem management and stability;
• providing input into architecture;
• performance management of technical staff;
• remote team management;
• managing escalations;
• direct liaison with technology infrastructure, engineering and application teams.

I previously managed a team of production systems administrators at Citi within the EMEA markets and banking infrastructure services department, supporting the fixed income commodities and currencies business (FX and Global Fixed Income Strategic Trading Services).

Week at a glance: I currently manage relationships with three primary client groups, so my time is divided among the three. I spend at least 20 hours a week tracking each client's infrastructure issues and strategies, as well as managing the infrastructure from a hardware perspective.

The rest of my time is divided between process improvement, inventory management, capacity management and trending, liaising with other technology teams on projects and ensuring all of the appropriate controls and compliance are in place.

All of this, however, is set aside if there is a production outage. If there's an infrastructure outage, I manage the escalation process and ensure all the right people are involved, that regular updates are published and that the issue is followed up with a post-mortem analysis.

Working hours: I try to keep to a regular nine hour schedule, but am always on-call for outage escalations and I have to be available for any outages overnight and at weekends.

July 2009