Data center technician lead vs senior system administrator

The differences between data center technician leads and senior system administrators can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 1-2 years to become both a data center technician lead and a senior system administrator. Additionally, a data center technician lead has an average salary of $128,891, which is higher than the $98,146 average annual salary of a senior system administrator.

The top three skills for a data center technician lead include infrastructure, cloud and java. The most important skills for a senior system administrator are linux, windows server, and troubleshoot.

Data center technician lead vs senior system administrator overview

	Data Center Technician Lead	Senior System Administrator
Yearly salary	$128,891	$98,146
Hourly rate	$61.97	$47.19
Growth rate	5%	5%
Number of jobs	118,299	100,873
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 43%	Bachelor's Degree, 62%
Average age	43	43
Years of experience	2	2

Data center technician lead vs senior system administrator salary

Data center technician leads and senior system administrators have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Data Center Technician Lead	Senior System Administrator
Average salary	$128,891	$98,146
Salary range	Between $76,000 And $217,000	Between $75,000 And $126,000
Highest paying City	-	San Francisco, CA
Highest paying state	-	California
Best paying company	-	Cambridge Associates
Best paying industry	-	Finance

Differences between data center technician lead and senior system administrator education

There are a few differences between a data center technician lead and a senior system administrator in terms of educational background:

	Data Center Technician Lead	Senior System Administrator
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 43%	Bachelor's Degree, 62%
Most common major	Business	Computer Science
Most common college	Stanford University	Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Data center technician lead vs senior system administrator demographics

Here are the differences between data center technician leads' and senior system administrators' demographics:

	Data Center Technician Lead	Senior System Administrator
Average age	43	43
Gender ratio	Male, 86.9% Female, 13.1%	Male, 89.0% Female, 11.0%
Race ratio	Black or African American, 8.5% Unknown, 5.1% Hispanic or Latino, 12.2% Asian, 11.8% White, 62.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3%	Black or African American, 8.9% Unknown, 5.1% Hispanic or Latino, 12.6% Asian, 11.8% White, 61.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3%
LGBT Percentage	9%	9%

Differences between data center technician lead and senior system administrator duties and responsibilities

Data center technician lead example responsibilities.

Recommend, engineer and manage office systems, including centralize productivity and communication systems such as e-mail and centralize desktop environments.
Install & setup BPCS & 3rd party ERP applications.
Provide first line defense by providing customer with support on hosting, HTML, FTP, POP3 issues.
Support various web-base applications, LAN/WAN connections and various media devices (FTP programs, PDAs and Smartphone's).
Set appropriate recovery model for SQL databases to maximize space used, depending on the type of data in the database.
Back up terabyte databases and perform restores and run consistency checks from SQL standby servers prior to making changes in production.

Senior system administrator example responsibilities.

Manage and optimize the design and delivery of project associate with AIX arena.
Manage all installs and setup of new servers, and server upgrades to server 2008 R2.
Implement IIS servers for both the internal and external web servers and managing security on all web servers.
Design, implement, and manage a network and domain extension in a remote location via a secure VPN link.
Manage Cisco network equipment including firewalls and switches.
Administer and manage daily backups via Symantec NetBackup.

Data center technician lead vs senior system administrator skills

Common data center technician lead skills

Infrastructure, 17%
Cloud, 13%
Java, 5%
Switches, 5%
Data Centers, 4%
Customer Service, 4%

Common senior system administrator skills

Linux, 7%
Windows Server, 6%
Troubleshoot, 5%
System Administration, 4%
PowerShell, 4%
SAN, 4%

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Data Center Technician Lead vs Senior System Administrator

Updated January 8, 2025

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