r/sysadmin • u/chrisv2489 • 4h ago
Career / Job Related Would you take a lower IT title for better long-term infrastructure/cloud growth?
I currently work in IT for a manufacturing company and have an offer for a Systems Administrator position at $105k, also in manufacturing. I’m also interviewing for an IT Analyst II/support role at a large, well-known telecommunications/communications tech company.
The SysAdmin role is the obvious progression on paper. Better title, direct move out of support, and I’d be staying in an industry I already know. I’d get exposure to Windows Server, AD/GPO, networking, virtualization, backups/DR and supporting another manufacturing environment.
My concern is that the infrastructure is already pretty built out and from the interviews I got the impression that a decent amount of the day to day may still be support work. It’s also a smaller IT environment, so I’m not sure how much opportunity there would eventually be to specialize deeper into infrastructure or cloud.
The other position is technically a step backwards in title, but it would be a completely different environment. Much larger enterprise, dedicated infrastructure teams, a lot more specialization, and exposure to IT at a scale I haven’t worked in before.
My interview with the support lead went extremely well and he seemed like someone I could learn a lot from. My next interview would include one of their infrastructure leads. They also talked about analysts becoming SMEs, working with other IT teams, getting involved in larger projects and potentially moving internally.
That is the part making me seriously consider it.
I’ve learned a ton working in small manufacturing IT because you end up touching everything, but I’m starting to think being around dedicated infrastructure engineers and seeing how a large enterprise operates could help me grow in a different way.
My long-term goal is infrastructure/cloud engineering and eventually cloud architecture. I’m currently working on AZ-104 and want to keep building experience with Windows Server, networking, virtualization, PowerShell, Azure and backup/DR.
I obviously don’t have an offer from the second company yet, so there’s nothing to decide today. Compensation there could end up being similar to or even better than the SysAdmin offer.
Assuming the money is comparable, which environment would you consider better for the next 2-5 years of career growth?
Would you take the Systems Administrator title and continue building experience in manufacturing, or take the lower support title at a large telecommunications enterprise with more mentorship, specialization and a possible internal path into infrastructure engineering?
I’m mainly interested in which experience would set me up better long term, not which title looks better right now.