Data center technician lead vs systems administrator

The differences between data center technician leads and systems 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 systems administrator. Additionally, a data center technician lead has an average salary of $128,891, which is higher than the $77,156 average annual salary of a systems administrator.

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

Data center technician lead vs systems administrator overview

	Data Center Technician Lead	Systems Administrator
Yearly salary	$128,891	$77,156
Hourly rate	$61.97	$37.09
Growth rate	5%	5%
Number of jobs	118,299	134,500
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 43%	Bachelor's Degree, 60%
Average age	43	43
Years of experience	2	2

Data center technician lead vs systems administrator salary

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

	Data Center Technician Lead	Systems Administrator
Average salary	$128,891	$77,156
Salary range	Between $76,000 And $217,000	Between $59,000 And $100,000
Highest paying City	-	San Francisco, CA
Highest paying state	-	California
Best paying company	-	Meta
Best paying industry	-	Technology

Differences between data center technician lead and systems administrator education

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

	Data Center Technician Lead	Systems Administrator
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 43%	Bachelor's Degree, 60%
Most common major	Business	Computer Science
Most common college	Stanford University	Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Data center technician lead vs systems administrator demographics

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

	Data Center Technician Lead	Systems Administrator
Average age	43	43
Gender ratio	Male, 86.9% Female, 13.1%	Male, 83.9% Female, 16.1%
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, 8.6% Unknown, 5.1% Hispanic or Latino, 12.3% Asian, 11.5% White, 62.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3%
LGBT Percentage	9%	9%

Differences between data center technician lead and systems 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.

Systems administrator example responsibilities.

Used Jenkins to automate most of the build relate tasks.
Manage windows file servers, messaging, and SQL databases.
Lead the project which integrate internal DNS into the corporate LDAP infrastructure for end user host management prior to deployment.
Lead business-critical information security initiatives involving encryption of customer data.
Authore and maintain shell and Perl scripts to automate administration tasks for infrastructure management.
Configure & manage all switches and servers responsible for providing WLAN connectivity and authentication services.

Data center technician lead vs systems administrator skills

Common data center technician lead skills

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

Common systems administrator skills

Linux, 7%
Troubleshoot, 7%
Windows Server, 6%
Database, 5%
Technical Support, 4%
PowerShell, 3%

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Data Center Technician Lead
Data Center Technician Lead vs Systems Administrator

Updated January 8, 2025

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