System Administrator

Position Purpose

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state, and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills, and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world. By being deeply invested in our work, showing compassion in our interactions, and embodying the spirit of a team player, each member contributes to a thriving community.

UW is committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff; your experiences, perspectives, and unique identities will be honored at the University of Washington. Together, our community strives to create and maintain working and learning environments that are inclusive, equitable, and welcoming.

University of Washington is at the forefront of leveraging cutting‑edge technologies to transform education, research and healthcare. UW Information Technology (UW‑IT) is the central IT organization for the University of Washington, collaborating with partners across the University community to advance teaching, learning, innovation and discovery. UW‑IT delivers critical IT services and support to all three campuses, UW medical centers and global research operations.

Innovation and discovery are at the heart of what UW‑IT does and drive the work in advancing the University of Washington's role and mission.

We are seeking a skilled and detail‑oriented System Administrator to support and advance the university's enterprise service management capabilities across all campuses and major administrative units. This role is pivotal in ensuring the stability, scalability, and continuous improvement of the Service Management, enabling efficient service delivery, workflow automation, and operational transparency across the institution. The System Administrator will collaborate with campus stakeholders, IT teams, and business units to manage platform configuration, integrations, and structured release cycles (including Jira‑based release management), while promoting governance, security and best practices.

The System Administrator role will work within Service Management and AI Platform team under the UW's IT infrastructure Umbrella that provides critical technology support to all three campuses, UW Medicine, and research operations around the world.

This role requires maintaining high standards for platform configuration, release management, security controls and operational governance within the Service Now environment. The System Administrator must ensure system stability, data integrity and structured change management practices while leveraging automation, integrations and Jira‑based release coordination to deliver predictable and low‑risk platform enhancements. A disciplined approach to documentation, testing, upgrade management and performance monitoring is essential to sustaining a secure, scalable and reliable enterprise service management platform.

Success in this position also depends on the ability to operate effectively within a decentralized and complex institutional environment. The System Administrator must collaborate across IT, HR, Finance, academic units and Information Security teams to align platform capabilities with diverse business needs while enforcing governance and compliance standards. Strong communication skills, stakeholder engagement, proactive issue resolution and continuous improvement are critical to ensuring that the Service Now platform remains resilient, compliant and strategically aligned with the university's broader technology and service delivery objectives.

The System Administrator serves as a key technical contributor on the Enterprise Applications team, responsible for the administration, configuration, optimization and ongoing support of the university's Service Now platform. This role combines strong platform administration expertise with hands‑on configuration, integration, release management coordination and governance practices to ensure reliable, secure and scalable delivery of IT service management (ITSM) and enterprise workflow solutions.

The…