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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Domain Administrator

💰 $ - $

ITSystems AdministrationSecurityIdentity and Access Management

🎯 Role Definition

A Domain Administrator is a specialized systems administrator responsible for the design, deployment, administration, troubleshooting and ongoing security of enterprise domain services and identity infrastructure. This role owns Active Directory (on-premises and hybrid), DNS/DHCP, Group Policy management, domain controller lifecycle, authentication and authorization frameworks, and identity synchronization/integration with cloud platforms (Azure AD, Microsoft Entra). The Domain Administrator ensures availability, performance, resilience and regulatory compliance of domain and authentication services while enabling secure user and device access across the organization.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Help Desk Technician (Tier 2) with strong Windows experience and AD exposure
  • Systems Administrator with experience supporting Windows servers and networking
  • Network Administrator who has performed DNS/DHCP and server lifecycle tasks

Advancement To:

  • Senior Systems Engineer (Identity & Access Management)
  • IT Infrastructure Manager / Director
  • Domain Architect / Enterprise Identity Architect
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM) Lead or Security Architect

Lateral Moves:

  • Security Analyst / Incident Response Specialist
  • Cloud Administrator (Azure / AWS identity focus)
  • Active Directory Engineer / Identity Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, deploy and maintain highly available Active Directory domain forests, organizational units, domain controllers, and replication topologies to meet business SLAs and compliance requirements, ensuring resilience across data centers and cloud environments.
  • Administer on-premises and hybrid identity systems including Microsoft Active Directory, Azure AD (Microsoft Entra ID), AD Connect, ADFS, and related synchronization services to provide consistent identity and authentication across applications and cloud services.
  • Plan and execute domain controller lifecycle management including installation, decommissioning, patching, schema updates, role transfers (FSMO) and remediation of replication issues while documenting changes and maintaining configuration baselines.
  • Configure and manage DNS and DHCP infrastructure for large, multi-site enterprises, including zone delegation, forwards, reverse lookups, conditional forwarders, split-brain DNS scenarios, and DHCP failover/clustering to ensure name resolution and IP allocation availability.
  • Develop, implement and enforce Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and security baselines across user and computer OUs to standardize configurations, harden endpoints, control software deployment, and enforce password, account lockout and Kerberos settings.
  • Own privileged account and domain administrator lifecycle including least privilege administration, tiering models, Just-In-Time (JIT) and Just-Enough-Administration (JEA) implementations, and integration with Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions.
  • Troubleshoot complex authentication and authorization failures including Kerberos ticketing issues, NTLM fallbacks, trust relationship problems, cross-domain authentication, and name resolution root causes across hybrid identity stacks.
  • Implement and maintain identity federation and SSO solutions, configure SAML/OIDC integrations with SaaS and custom applications, and validate token flows, claims rules, and certificate lifecycles for secure cross-domain authentication.
  • Design and operate certificate services (AD CS), manage enterprise PKI, certificate templates, revocation lists (CRL/OCSP), and automation for certificate enrollment and renewal for domain controllers and service accounts.
  • Create and maintain runbooks, playbooks and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for domain operations, backup/restore procedures for AD, emergency domain controller recovery, and disaster recovery drills to minimize downtime.
  • Monitor domain health proactively using tools like Microsoft SCOM, Azure Monitor, Event Log aggregation, and third-party monitoring solutions; analyze logs to detect anomalies, replication failures and security events.
  • Lead AD migrations, merges, domain consolidations, or restructuring projects with minimal impact to users and services, managing UPN suffix changes, SIDHistory, cross-forest migrations and mailbox moves in collaboration with Exchange/Office 365 teams.
  • Implement and administer identity lifecycle automation for provisioning and deprovisioning user, group and computer objects using AD PowerShell, automation workflows, and Identity Governance tools to reduce manual errors and improve auditability.
  • Integrate Active Directory with endpoint management solutions (SCCM/ConfigMgr, Intune) to support device enrollment, compliance policies, and conditional access policies driven by device and user identity signals.
  • Enforce compliance and security controls for identity systems: perform regular audits of group memberships, privileged accounts, GPOs, and delegation, and implement remediation plans for critical misconfigurations and segregation-of-duties violations.
  • Collaborate with application owners, security, networking and cloud teams to onboard applications to AD-integrated authentication mechanisms, troubleshoot single sign-on issues and ensure secure LDAP (LDAPS) and modern auth adoption.
  • Manage service accounts, group-managed service accounts (gMSA), and Managed Identities, ensuring secure credentials handling, password rotation policies, and removing legacy static credentials.
  • Perform capacity planning and performance tuning for domain controllers and identity services, including sizing DCs, evaluating virtualization vs physical deployments, and optimizing replication schedules to improve login and authentication performance.
  • Lead incident response activities related to identity compromise, suspicious privileged activity or domain breaches, coordinate forensic capture of AD artifacts (NTDS.dit, SYSVOL, event logs), and implement remediation and containment measures.
  • Maintain documentation and architecture diagrams for domain, OU structures, trust relationships, and identity flows; provide regular reports to leadership on domain health, security posture, and upcoming changes.
  • Automate repetitive administration tasks using PowerShell, .NET scripts, or configuration management tools (Ansible, Chef) while ensuring secure execution contexts and logging for audit trails.
  • Validate and maintain interoperability between on-premises AD and cloud identity providers, ensuring secure synchronization, password hash sync or pass-through authentication, and implementing appropriate conditional access policies.
  • Support migration to modern authentication and identity models (Azure AD Join, Hybrid Azure AD Join, passwordless auth) and pilot new identity enhancements while assessing risk and rollback strategies.
  • Coordinate change windows and execute complex changes to identity infrastructure with minimal user impact, including communication plans, testing procedures, backout plans and post-change validation.
  • Maintain inventory and lifecycle of domain-related infrastructure including domain controllers, DNS servers, DHCP appliances, and legacy LDAP directories; plan hardware/VM refresh and vendor lifecycle replacement.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Provide Tier 3 support and mentorship to junior system administrators, creating training materials and knowledge base articles for recurring domain administration tasks.
  • Participate in security reviews and change advisory board discussions to represent identity impacts of proposed changes.
  • Assist with license management and cost optimization for identity-related cloud services (Azure AD P1/P2, Microsoft 365 licensing).
  • Prototype and document integrations between identity services and third-party SaaS platforms to improve onboarding speed and security posture.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Active Directory design, administration, AD forest/domain trusts, schema management and domain controller operations.
  • Deep knowledge of DNS and DHCP administration in enterprise environments, including troubleshooting of name resolution and lease issues.
  • Solid understanding and practical experience with Group Policy (GPO) design, loopback processing, item-level targeting, and GPO troubleshooting techniques.
  • Experience with Azure AD (Microsoft Entra ID), AD Connect, hybrid identity synchronization and SSO integrations using SAML, OAuth/OIDC.
  • Expertise in authentication protocols and services: Kerberos, NTLM, LDAP/LDAPS, SAML, OAuth, and OIDC.
  • PowerShell scripting proficiency for automation of AD tasks (user provisioning, group management, bulk operations, reporting) and incident remediation.
  • Familiarity with identity and access management tools: AD CS (PKI), ADFS, PAM solutions (CyberArk, Microsoft PAM), Identity Governance and Admin roles.
  • Knowledge of domain controller backup, AD database (NTDS.dit) integrity, authoritative and non-authoritative restores, and disaster recovery procedures.
  • Experience with monitoring and logging tools for identity infrastructure (Windows Event Forwarding, SIEM integration, Azure Monitor, SCOM).
  • Networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, routing, VLANs, firewalls and their impact on Kerberos, DNS, LDAP and replication traffic.
  • Experience integrating AD with endpoint management (SCCM/ConfigMgr, Intune) and Exchange/Office 365 identity dependencies.
  • Familiarity with cloud identity architecture, conditional access policies, modern authentication and passwordless technologies.
  • Knowledge of security frameworks, compliance controls and audit requirements related to identity (NIST, ISO27001, SOC2, PCI).
  • Experience with third-party AD management tools (Quest, ManageEngine, Netwrix) and migration tools for cross-forest moves.
  • Basic SQL or experience interpreting AD-related tables/reports for troubleshooting (helpful).
  • Experience with virtualization platforms (Hyper-V, VMware) for domain controller hosting best practices.

Soft Skills

  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with ability to diagnose cross-domain issues under pressure.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication; able to explain complex identity issues to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Attention to detail and strong documentation habits for SOPs, runbooks and change records.
  • Collaborative mindset: works well with security, networking, cloud and application teams.
  • Project management and organizational skills to lead identity migrations, refresh projects and cross-functional initiatives.
  • Customer-focused approach with a commitment to service-level delivery and user experience.
  • Ability to mentor and upskill junior administrators and run knowledge-transfer sessions.
  • Critical thinking and risk assessment skills when designing or changing identity infrastructure.
  • Adaptability to evolving identity threats and cloud identity trends.
  • Proactive mindset for continuous improvement, automation and technical debt reduction.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Associate degree or equivalent professional certifications in IT, Computer Science, Information Systems or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, or related discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Cybersecurity
  • Network Administration
  • Systems Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of hands-on systems administration experience with at least 2–4 years specifically administering Active Directory and enterprise domain services.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of focused experience administering large-scale Active Directory environments, hybrid identity integrations (Azure AD), and demonstrated experience with identity security controls and incident response.

Certifications (beneficial): Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator Associate, Microsoft Certified: Windows Server Hybrid Administrator, CompTIA Security+, Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), or vendor-specific certifications relevant to identity and security.

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