WHAT DOES A SYSTEMS DO?
Published: Jan 08, 2026 - The Systems Professional oversees the design, implementation, and optimization of technology infrastructures that support organizational operations and long-term scalability. This position involves maintaining system reliability, resolving technical issues, coordinating upgrades, and ensuring that security and compliance standards are consistently met across all platforms. The individual also collaborates with cross-functional teams to improve system performance, streamline workflows, and drive technology solutions that enhance overall business efficiency.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Systems
1. Systems Analyst Role Purpose
- Technical Support: Assist users experiencing problems with hardware, software, telecommunications, and other computer-related issues.
- Issue Management: Track and report issues, escalate on demand, and help implement proactive, long-term solutions.
- PC Deployment: Build out and install personal computers, software, and peripheral equipment.
- Server Deployment: Build out and install servers, software, and peripheral equipment.
- Server Room Maintenance: Maintain the server room switches, battery backup units, and environmental monitoring systems.
- Telecom Configuration: Configure and deploy wireless and desktop phone equipment.
- Voice Systems: Configure and maintain voice mailbox systems and telecom-related reporting.
- Account Administration: Maintain user accounts, including adding, removing, and updating access.
- Backup Management: Maintain and monitor backup jobs, software, and hardware.
- Vendor Management: Develop and maintain vendor relationships with telecom service providers.
- Escalation Handling: Ensure proper problem escalation and invoice validation.
- Access Provisioning: Process and implement equipment and access in support of personnel moves, adds, and changes.
2. Systems Analyst Responsibilities
- Requirements Analysis: Gather, formulate, and define requirements to solve intermediate to complex business problems.
- User Support: Provide technical team members and users with assistance in solving application-related problems, such as malfunctions and program issues.
- Application Design: Analyze requirements, plan, and design applications using techniques such as structured analysis, data modeling, and information engineering.
- Testing Execution: Plan and execute appropriate testing, including test plans, test cases, and test scripts, to comprehensively test assigned enhancements to business applications.
- Release Coordination: Coordinate the installation and deployment of application enhancements and releases.
- Application Enhancement: Expand or modify applications to serve new purposes or improve workflow.
- Package Evaluation: Assess the usefulness of pre-developed application packages and adapt them to the user environment.
- Documentation Standards: Develop, document, and revise flowcharts, system design procedures, test procedures, and quality standards.
- Code Review: Review and analyze applications, including performance results, to identify code-related issues.
- Project Leadership: Oversee work products of other Systems Analysts and serve as project leaders for small-sized systems projects.
- Team Mentoring: Coach and mentor team members.
3. Systems Architect Key Accountabilities
- Stakeholder Engagement: Develop trusting relationships with business and IT stakeholders.
- Platform Strategy: Work with other architects to define the platform strategy to meet current and future requirements.
- Logical Architecture: Work primarily across conceptual and logical architecture levels and create logical reference architecture diagrams.
- Solution Collaboration: Collaborate with domain and capability architects to identify new solutions.
- Architecture Alignment: Partner with system architects, delivery teams, and new initiatives to drive alignment of solutions with reference architectures and strategies.
- Vendor Engagement: Engage and influence vendors to identify, learn, and socialize emerging product capabilities to meet business needs.
- Architecture Skills: Learn and apply fundamental architecture skills.
- Technical Leadership: Provide technical leadership within the data enablement team and mentor and coach technical talent in the data management team.
- Requirements Translation: Translate customer requirements into the most effective data preparation solutions.
- Design Assessment: Identify limitations in data management solution design, supporting dependencies, and propose alternatives.
- Vendor Coordination: Engage with data management vendors to drive improvements and coordinate technical fixes.
- Documentation Management: Update and maintain data preparation security models, RASCIs, risk assessments, and other required IT documentation.
4. Systems Architect Duties
- Requirements Analysis: Analyse customer feature requirements.
- Technical Feasibility: Provide feasibility studies, technical analysis, and performance evaluations.
- System Specification: Specify concepts and system requirements.
- Performance Definition: Define scenarios and performance requirements for verification of feature gains.
- Simulation Coordination: Coordinate system-level simulation campaigns and analyse simulation results to derive appropriate feature performance requirements.
- Agile Support: Support development teams using agile development methods.
- Feature Verification: Support feature verification, offering, and customer application.
- Customer Documentation: Support the creation of customer documentation.
- SoC Requirements: Support requirement analysis for System on Chip designs.
- R&D Coordination: Coordinate publicly funded research and development projects.
5. Systems Developer Functions
- Issue Resolution: Analyze and resolve production trouble reports (PTR) and system change requests (SCR) by identifying root causes, determining required fixes, and providing solutions.
- Unit Testing: Perform unit testing of programming changes implemented to resolve PTRs and SCRs.
- Help Desk Support: Provide help desk support by answering questions, identifying issues, and responding within established response times.
- Data Migration: Support the conversion and migration of data from legacy files and database schemas to the target Database Management System (DBMS) architecture or schema.
- Data Mapping: Analyze and map source data elements to target schema structures, develop conversion and load scripts, and execute and validate data migrations.
- Mainframe Development: Perform programming changes on the mainframe, including updates to associated web-based front-end applications.
- Application Decommissioning: Support application decommissioning activities, including dataset cleanup, USERID removal, storage cleanup, and shutdown of dependent interfaces.
- Performance Metrics: Contribute to project deliverables and performance metrics.
- Software Development: Develop, create, and modify general application software or specialized utility programs.
- Requirements Analysis: Analyze user needs and develop appropriate software solutions.
- Software Design: Design or customize software solutions to optimize client operational efficiency.
6. Senior Systems Developer Essential Functions
- Architecture Design: Design and implement an automated network and web hosting architecture for distributed applications.
- Linux Administration: Manage the configuration and administration of Linux virtual servers and networks.
- Tooling Management: Manage internal tooling and logging systems.
- Cross-Team Support: Work with internal departments to resolve issues and scale systems.
- Service Monitoring: Handle service monitoring and alert response.
- On-Call Support: Participate in an on-call alert schedule.
- Knowledge Sharing: Act as a source of knowledge for other departments.
- Secure Development: Implement secure systems development best practices.
- Security Training: Participate in ongoing security training and awareness.
7. Systems Engineer Overview
- Infrastructure Planning: Support public infrastructure planning and design.
- Systems Engineering: Support systems engineering for transportation, water, aviation, and other projects.
- Requirements Management: Perform requirements management of design criteria.
- Interface Coordination: Perform interface management and coordination between teams.
- Design Verification: Support verification of civil engineering design through quality management and oversight.
- ITS Engineering: Perform systems engineering for intelligent transportation systems projects.
- Process Documentation: Review, analyze, and document team processes to support project delivery and quality.
- Risk Management: Support risk management and coordination of teams and projects.
- Project Tools: Support project leaders by implementing project management tools.
- Data Reporting: Support project leaders by analyzing data and developing reports.
8. Systems Engineer Responsibilities and Key Tasks
- Configuration Management: Maintain and refine the project’s configuration management, documentation management, and change management policies and procedures.
- Policy Oversight: Oversee the implementation of configuration management policies and procedures.
- Product Structuring: Structure the product configuration in alignment with the defined product structure.
- Version Control: Manage versioning and serialization of products.
- Baseline Management: Work with product teams to establish baselines for major development milestones.
- Change Control: Assist the Systems Engineering team in managing changes to approved baselines.
- Workflow Management: Manage the workflow of approved changes.
- Documentation Control: Oversee numbering, versioning, and status accounting of project documentation.
- CAD Integration: Work with CAD teams to integrate CAD development and product configuration data.
- Status Reporting: Report implementation status and product configuration quality to project management.
- Team Management: Recruit and manage configuration management staff to support the full scale of the project.
- Configuration Audits: Conduct regular audits of product configuration to verify completeness and accuracy.
- CM Tool Administration: Own the configuration management software system and oversee its administration and customization as required by the project.
- Staff Training: Train project staff on configuration management policies, procedures, and tools.
9. Senior Systems Engineer Roles
- Network Operations: Maintain the ISP network and hosting environment, including mail, DNS, firewall, web, and all virtual server environments.
- Project Delivery: Participate effectively in projects and the rollout of solutions to clients.
- Application Support: Support and maintain custom in-house applications.
- Infrastructure Security: Manage the integrity of the network, server deployment, and security.
- IT Support: Provide remote and on-site IT support to all internal and external stakeholders.
- Technical Assistance: Offer technical support in hardware, software, systems, and administration.
- Stakeholder Communication: Maintain constant communication with end users, engineers, partners, and third-party service providers on technical support matters.
- On-Call Support: Provide after-hours support on a rotational basis with the team.
- Security Management: Create, oversee, and test security measures such as access authentication and disaster recovery.
- Network Roadmaps: Build and document network management and telemetry road maps for infrastructure and services.
- Cloud Integration: Integrate network management platforms into the Microsoft cloud for new and existing technologies.
- Cloud Deployment: Deploy workloads to public clouds such as Amazon and Azure.
- System Architecture: Design and architect fault-tolerant systems.
10. Systems Manager General Responsibilities
- Process Governance: Govern and maintain accountability for core project management systems and end-to-end processes, including implementation, roll-out, onboarding, upgrading, scaling, and ongoing integrations.
- IT Leadership: Act as the primary point of contact for ongoing IT developments within the department.
- Solution Delivery: Drive IT solutions by defining scope, managing stakeholders, and overseeing budgets.
- Workflow Optimization: Optimize workflows and department-wide processes and calendars to improve efficiency and align with management’s business priorities.
- Project Transparency: Increase speed and transparency across all projects.
- Technology Research: Research internal and external technologies and evaluate opportunities to gain efficiencies.
- IT Governance: Oversee server and cloud governance in cooperation with the IT department.
- Performance Improvement: Measure, evaluate, and continuously improve workflow components to maximize performance.
- Marketing Transformation: Evolve the department toward next-generation marketing aligned with business objectives.
- Marketing Enablement: Engage deeply in marketing processes to implement proactive improvements.
11. GMP Compliance and Systems Specialist Tasks
- Quality Programs: Implement and regularly update quality programs, including GMP and GHP.
- Audit Execution: Conduct GMP and GHP audits and demonstrate a proactive approach to problem-solving and continuous improvement.
- Audit Support: Support internal and external audits.
- Standards Alignment: Assess factory-related audit manuals and create action plans to ensure alignment with defined standards.
- Process Sustainability: Evaluate process sustainability through internal audits.
- Documentation Management: Assist in managing quality documentation.
- Quality Projects: Participate in projects related to quality and new product development.
- Training Coordination: Coordinate training programs for relevant projects in collaboration with key stakeholders.
- Process Facilitation: Facilitate process reviews using internal and external audits and established routines to strengthen quality ownership across all functions.
- CAT Execution: Execute the CAT process by uploading result analyses to the CAT tool, planning recipe analyses, reviewing non-compliant results, and following up on actions.
- Stakeholder Support: Support initiative stakeholders by helping remove obstacles that hinder project implementation.
- Compliance Support: Promote and support compliance improvements and quality awareness throughout the factory.
- Quality Verification: Conduct and support quality auditing and verification activities.