Company Overview

Carbery Group is dedicated to enriching lives. How do we do this? Owned by the farmers of West Cork, we are a global business with deep local roots. Our mission is to deliver lasting value to our farmer shareholders while making positive impact on our customers, employees, suppliers, partners, and the communities we serve. We are committed to doing this by creating healthier, tastier, and more sustainable food and ingredient solutions.

With customers in over 50 countries, we pride ourselves on our commitment to innovation, our open mindset and ability to be a good partner. We prioritise our customers' needs, while also valuing our planet and fostering a thriving, people-first environment.

Your Role in Carbery's Success

Manager, Systems Administration

How You Will Contribute

As part of Carbery Group’s global digital transformation programme, we are seeking a Manager, Systems Administration (Europe) to join our IT team at our headquarters in Ballineen, Cork. Reporting to the IT Director, Europe & Asia, this role has end-to-end responsibility for the reliability, resilience and high availability of our European infrastructure services—ensuring they are secure, scalable and engineered to support an always-on, growing business.

You will lead infrastructure architecture and upgrade programmes across Europe, providing technical direction across identity & access management, virtualisation, networking and cloud services. You will manage 3rd-party vendors, drive improvements that reduce risk and minimise downtime, maintain documentation and runbooks, manage patching and configuration baselines, and provide escalation support. You will also contribute to global platform and architecture decisions, helping to shape standards and operating models that improve availability, resilience and security across the organisation.

How You Will Contribute:

Infrastructure Installation, Operations & Lifecycle: Lead the deployment, configuration and lifecycle management of server, storage and network infrastructure. Drive standardisation, capacity planning and preventive maintenance to maximise availability, performance and security across European sites.
Systems Administration & Platform Reliability: Own the operational health of Windows/Linux, virtualisation (VMware/Hyper-V) and cloud services. Maintain secure configuration baselines, patching and change control, and engineer improvements that increase resilience and reduce unplanned outages.
Service Desk Escalation & Service Continuity: Lead the service desk escalation function, ensuring timely resolution of complex issues and clear communication with users. Drive problem management, including root-cause analysis and permanent fixes, to minimise repeat incidents and protect service availability.
Backup, Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity: Define, implement and continuously improve backup and DR capabilities for critical services, aligned to agreed RTO/RPO targets. Run regular restore and failover tests, maintain recovery runbooks, and remediate gaps to ensure recoverability and data integrity.
Security, Risk & Compliance: Ensure infrastructure services meet security and compliance requirements through secure design, vulnerability management, patching and access control. Partner with cyber security to implement and maintain controls (e.g., firewalls, detection/response, encryption) without compromising availability.
Network Architecture & Operations: Design, configure and support LAN/WAN, firewalls and wireless to deliver secure, resilient connectivity. Improve network availability through appropriate redundancy and proactive capacity/performance management, and lead troubleshooting of complex connectivity and routing issues.
Automation, Scripting & Standardisation: Use automation and scripting (e.g., PowerShell, Bash) to standardise builds, reduce manual effort and minimise human error. Automate routine operations where feasible to improve consistency, speed of recovery and overall service reliability.
Documentation, Runbooks & Knowledge Sharing: Maintain accurate architecture, configuration and operational documentation, including support runbooks and recovery procedures. Share knowledge across the global IT team through coaching, mentoring and continuous improvement of service desk and infrastructure practices.
Supplier & Vendor Management: Manage suppliers delivering infrastructure products and services, including procurement, warranties and 3rd-party support. Ensure clear SLA’s, effective escalation paths, and value-for-money outcomes that support availability, security and lifecycle objectives.
Monitoring, Observability & Performance Management: Implement and maintain monitoring, alerting and logging to detect issues early and reduce mean time to restore (MTTR). Track performance and capacity trends, tune platforms to remove bottlenecks, and support high availability of business-critical services.

Key Ingredients for Success:

Education & Experience

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
7+ years of experience in systems administration, infrastructure support, IT operations project delivery or related IT roles, including enterprise-level infrastructure (servers, storage, and networking).
Experience providing L2/L3 escalation support, leading root-cause analysis and driving permanent corrective actions.

Core Technical Competencies (aligned to role responsibilities)

Infrastructure operations & lifecycle: management of enterprise infrastructure with strong change control and documentation/runbook discipline.
Virtualisation & compute: VMware, Hyper-V configuration, performance monitoring, troubleshooting and remediation.
Windows & identity services: extensive Windows Server administration; Active Directory design/architecture/support; Group Policy design/architecture/support; core services including DNS and DHCP.
Microsoft 365 & Azure: administration of Microsoft 365 tenants and Azure services, including Entra, Conditional Access policy management, Azure MFA and Intune.
Networking & connectivity: strong fundamentals across LAN/WAN (L2/L3), VPNs (client and site-to-site), routing/troubleshooting, DNS (public/private) and SSL certificates; experience with next gen firewalls and DMZ environments.
Network platforms: experience with Cisco, Aruba, Palo Alto, UniFi (firewall, switching and wireless) configuration and operations.
Monitoring & performance management: experience with monitoring tools/systems and performance management to reduce incidents and improve availability.
Backup, replication & disaster recovery: hands-on experience with backup solutions and DR planning/testing (e.g., Veeam/Acronis/Rubrik), aligned to agreed RTO/RPO.
Automation & scripting: PowerShell (and/or Bash) to standardise builds, automate routine tasks and improve reliability.
Operating systems: proficiency administering Windows and Linux operating systems.
Service tooling: familiarity with ITSM/ticketing systems (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira) and ITIL support processes.

Service Management, Leadership & Ways of Working

Structured, data-driven problem solving with a strong availability and resilience mindset (triage, root-cause analysis, permanent corrective actions).
Clear, confident communication—able to translate technical risk and trade-offs for non-technical audiences and provide calm, timely updates during incidents.
Strong organisational discipline with consistent adherence to governance, change control and high-quality documentation/runbooks.
Service ownership mindset focused on reliability outcomes (availability, recoverability, MTTR reduction) and continuous improvement through standardisation and automation.
Strong stakeholder management—able to align expectations, negotiate priorities, and make pragmatic risk-based decisions.
Supplier and vendor management, including holding partners to SLAs and driving effective escalations.
Requirement to travel across European locations.

Desirable / Advantageous

Exposure to Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions (e.g., CyberArk) and security tooling such as CrowdStrike; experience with Palo Alto firewalls.
CCNA/CCNP certification (or equivalent networking certification/experience).
SQL Server administration experience.
Understanding of Microsoft licensing.

Core Technologies (hands-on)

Windows Server; Active Directory; Group Policy; PowerShell; Microsoft 365 administration; Azure administration; VMware; Hyper-V; Networking fundamentals (L2/L3); Next gen firewalls & DMZ; client and site-to-site VPN; public/private DNS; SSL certificates; anti-virus/anti-malware; Cisco/Aruba/UniFi switching and wireless.

Our Commitment to our People

We are a diverse and growing workforce of over 1,000 people across eight countries globally. As we continue to grow, we want to ensure that Carbery Group continues to be a place where people are supported to develop and feel that they can do their best work. We are committed to driving growth, developing future capability and delivering results through our dedicated teams.

We offer competitive salaries, comprehensive benefits, and an inclusive workplace where your skills, perspectives, and experience help shape the future of our industry. Join us and be part of a team that values collaboration and makes a meaningful impact - from local communities to global markets.

Carbery Group is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to fostering a supportive work environment.

Manager, Systems Administration

Benefits

Job Description