Best Jobs For Former Systems Administrators [2023]

It’s tough to be a systems administrator nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a systems administrator isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become systems administrators in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many systems administrators no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former systems administrators to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Best Jobs For Former SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATORS

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATORS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Systems Engineer	3.96%
2	Senior System Administrator	2.72%
3	Information Technology Manager	1.87%
4	Network Administrator	1.83%
5	Senior Systems Engineer	1.78%
6	Network Engineer	1.65%
7	Technical Support Specialist	1.38%
8	Information Technology Specialist	1.12%
9	Consultant	1.12%
10	Network Technician	1.12%
11	Information Technology Consultant	1.0%
12	Systems Analyst	0.87%
13	Windows System Administrator	0.82%
14	Project Manager	0.82%
15	Technical Support Engineer	0.64%
16	Engineer	0.61%
17	Software Engineer	0.61%
18	Information Systems Technician	0.6%
19	Director Of Information	0.59%
20	Administrator	0.58%
21	Information Technology Technician	0.56%
22	Senior Network Engineer	0.55%
23	Team Leader	0.53%
24	Computer Technician	0.48%
25	Field Service Technician	0.48%
26	Information Technology Administrator	0.48%
27	Business Analyst	0.47%
28	Storage Administrator	0.46%
29	Information Technology Director	0.44%
30	Technical Consultant	0.44%
31	Information Technology Project Manager	0.43%
32	Linux Systems Administrator	0.42%
33	Owner	0.42%
34	Vmware Administrator	0.39%
35	Senior Software Engineer	0.37%
36	Information Security Analyst	0.37%
37	Manager	0.36%
38	Desktop Support Technician	0.35%
39	Database Administrator	0.34%
40	Unix Systems Administrator	0.34%
41	Senior Engineer	0.33%
42	Senior Consultant	0.33%
43	Information Technology/support Technician	0.32%
44	Senior Systems Analyst	0.31%
45	Senior Network Administrator	0.3%
46	Operations Manager	0.29%
47	Technical Support Technician	0.29%
48	Analyst	0.28%
49	Technician	0.28%
50	Technical Analyst	0.27%
51	Program Manager	0.27%
52	Senior Linux Engineer	0.27%
53	Information Technology Analyst	0.27%
54	Help Desk Analyst	0.26%
55	Help Desk Specialist	0.25%
56	Infrastructure Engineer	0.25%
57	Linux Administrator	0.25%
58	Solutions Architect	0.24%
59	Software Developer	0.24%
60	Systems Administrator Lead	0.23%
61	Data Analyst	0.22%
62	Lead Technician	0.22%
63	Senior Unix Systems Administrator	0.21%
64	Senior Analyst	0.21%
65	Desktop Engineer	0.2%
66	Security Engineer	0.2%
67	Information Systems Administrator	0.2%
68	Field Engineer	0.2%
69	Senior Project Manager	0.2%
70	Senior Storage Engineer	0.19%
71	Web Developer	0.19%
72	Desktop Support Specialist	0.19%
73	Senior Manager	0.18%
74	Quality Assurance Engineer	0.18%
75	Specialist	0.18%
76	Senior Infrastructure Engineer	0.18%
77	Systems Manager	0.18%
78	Support Specialist	0.18%
79	Service Engineer	0.18%
80	Sharepoint Administrator	0.18%
81	Application Engineer	0.17%
82	Senior Support Engineer	0.17%
83	Architect	0.17%
84	Field Technician	0.17%
85	Senior Technologist	0.17%
86	Senior Technician Specialist	0.17%
87	Owner/operator	0.17%
88	Operations Engineer	0.17%
89	Customer Service Representative	0.16%
90	Devops Engineer	0.16%
91	Information Technology Contractor	0.16%
92	Network Manager	0.16%
93	Systems Architect	0.16%
94	Programmer Analyst	0.16%
95	Technical Systems Engineer	0.16%
96	Information Technology Operations Manager	0.16%
97	Vice President	0.15%
98	Securities Analyst	0.15%
99	Information Engineer	0.15%
100	Technical Support Representative	0.15%

Most Common Jobs For Former SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATORS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a systems administrator would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former systems administrators to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATORS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed systems administrator under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a systems administrator, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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