Background information about the job or company (e.g., role context, company overview)

The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), established in 1988 is a public not-for-profit organization devoted to the advancement of economic policy research and training. AERC's mission is to strengthen local capacity for conducting independent, rigorous inquiry into the problems facing the management of economies in sub-Saharan Africa. That mission rests on two basic premises.

Responsibilities or duties

Systems Administration

• Develop, deploy, and maintain appropriate business applications that support critical business processes to facilitate operations and decision making such as MS Navision or custom-made systems like Learning Management System, Research Management System, etc.
• Install new/ rebuild existing servers and configure IT infrastructure including network, servers, storage, endpoints etc. in accordance with standards and project/operational requirements.
• Ensuring systems’ availability and capacity planning to meet evolving programme operational requirements and in conformity to best practices.
• Manage, configure and administer on premise virtualized system environment and cloud infrastructure including MS Navision, Office365, Azure and AWS
• Contribute to and maintain system standards through configuration management, enforcement of change procedures, integrity monitoring, periodic compliance reviews in line with best practices.
• Research and recommend innovative, and where possible automated approaches for system administration tasks for cost efficiency.
• Management of the ICT infrastructure during the office move to the TDB building

IT Enabled Implementations

• Working with departments/units to identify needs, devise requirements, assess process changes and propose solutions for evaluation.
• Coordinating technical development, testing, and implementation of systems in outsourced systems development projects.
• Assist in developing enterprise data model and implementation of business analytics tools using Power BI.
• Research and implement innovative solutions in response to emerging user needs for new systems or changes to existing systems as required.

Operations and Support

• Provide first level support including investigating and troubleshooting Help desk issues. Proactively coordinating and communicating with impacted users.
• Perform continuous system monitoring, verifying the integrity and availability of information resources, and key processes e.g. reviewing, analyzing and correlating event logs for incident resolution.
• Perform backup and replication operations and carry out recovery testing to ensure compliance with DRP and BCP requirements.
• Management of external service providers for contract management, negotiations and to troubleshoot and resolve infrastructure including network, storage and unified communications incidents within MTTR specifications.
• Provide advisory, support, and set up of all organizational technical workshops, plenary meetings, and major conferences.
• Identify requisite training needs in any of the implemented systems and assist in the development and implementation of the training.

Maintenance

• Apply OS patches and upgrades on a regular basis, and upgrade administrative tools and utilities. Configure / add new services as necessary.
• Develop and maintain operational, configuration and other standard operating procedures.
• Perform routine performance tuning, upgrades and resource optimization to meet processing, storage and retrieval capacity demands
• Perform periodic performance reporting to support capacity planning
• Maintain an asset inventory of all systems connected to the network, devices and software’s Maintain data center environment and implement remote monitoring tools.

IT Security

• Assist in ensuring the effectiveness of information security controls and continuous fidelity of the overall information security posture.
• Support in deploying and maintaining anti-exploitation tools such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), virtualization/containerization, etc.
• Accountable for business continuity and effective user support of the IT infrastructure and systems. (Provision of 1st and 2nd level support to staff)

Qualifications or requirements (e.g., education, skills)

Experience needed

• Should have experience in IT project implementation, PRINCE2 or PMP certification preferred.
• System Administration/System Engineer certifications in Microsoft. ITIL foundation certification is a plus
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics Navision, Microsoft CRM and Power BI implementation and administration. MS Dynamics Navision related certification is a plus.
• Should also have experience in systems and network security. CISSP certification is preferred.
• Experience in administering Office 365, Azure, AWS and Google cloud infrastructure and services. A certification in any one of these platforms is a plus

• Develop, deploy, and maintain appropriate business applications that support critical business processes to facilitate operations and decision making such as MS Navision or custom-made systems like Learning Management System, Research Management System, etc.
• Install new/ rebuild existing servers and configure IT infrastructure including network, servers, storage, endpoints etc. in accordance with standards and project/operational requirements.
• Ensuring systems’ availability and capacity planning to meet evolving programme operational requirements and in conformity to best practices.
• Manage, configure and administer on premise virtualized system environment and cloud infrastructure including MS Navision, Office365, Azure and AWS
• Contribute to and maintain system standards through configuration management, enforcement of change procedures, integrity monitoring, periodic compliance reviews in line with best practices.
• Research and recommend innovative, and where possible automated approaches for system administration tasks for cost efficiency.
• Management of the ICT infrastructure during the office move to the TDB building
• Working with departments/units to identify needs, devise requirements, assess process changes and propose solutions for evaluation.
• Coordinating technical development, testing, and implementation of systems in outsourced systems development projects.
• Assist in developing enterprise data model and implementation of business analytics tools using Power BI.
• Research and implement innovative solutions in response to emerging user needs for new systems or changes to existing systems as required.
• Provide first level support including investigating and troubleshooting Help desk issues. Proactively coordinating and communicating with impacted users.
• Perform continuous system monitoring, verifying the integrity and availability of information resources, and key processes e.g. reviewing, analyzing and correlating event logs for incident resolution.
• Perform backup and replication operations and carry out recovery testing to ensure compliance with DRP and BCP requirements.
• Management of external service providers for contract management, negotiations and to troubleshoot and resolve infrastructure including network, storage and unified communications incidents within MTTR specifications.
• Provide advisory, support, and set up of all organizational technical workshops, plenary meetings, and major conferences.
• Identify requisite training needs in any of the implemented systems and assist in the development and implementation of the training.
• Apply OS patches and upgrades on a regular basis, and upgrade administrative tools and utilities. Configure / add new services as necessary.
• Develop and maintain operational, configuration and other standard operating procedures.
• Perform routine performance tuning, upgrades and resource optimization to meet processing, storage and retrieval capacity demands
• Perform periodic performance reporting to support capacity planning
• Maintain an asset inventory of all systems connected to the network, devices and software’s Maintain data center environment and implement remote monitoring tools.
• Assist in ensuring the effectiveness of information security controls and continuous fidelity of the overall information security posture.
• Support in deploying and maintaining anti-exploitation tools such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), virtualization/containerization, etc.
• Accountable for business continuity and effective user support of the IT infrastructure and systems. (Provision of 1st and 2nd level support to staff)

• Microsoft Dynamics Navision
• Microsoft CRM
• Power BI
• Systems and network security
• Office 365 administration
• Azure administration
• AWS administration
• Google cloud infrastructure administration

• BA/BSc/HND
• Experience in IT project implementation
• PRINCE2 or PMP certification preferred
• System Administration/System Engineer certifications in Microsoft
• ITIL foundation certification is a plus
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics Navision, Microsoft CRM and Power BI implementation and administration
• MS Dynamics Navision related certification is a plus
• Experience in systems and network security
• CISSP certification is preferred
• Experience in administering Office 365, Azure, AWS and Google cloud infrastructure and services
• A certification in any one of these platforms is a plus