Long story short: after working at a big MSP pulling 100+ tickets a day, I moved to a small IT consulting company that wants to spin up its own help desk. I negotiated the ability to pick my own title, and I'm torn between Systems Administrator and IT Service Delivery Manager. Maybe something else?
For context on what the role actually looks like: I'm setting up the whole environment from scratch (going with Huntress EDR/ITDR/SAT and NinjaOne), deciding how tickets should be handled, what the workflow should be, etc, and I'll be the one working tickets solo until we bring on 1-2 Tier 1s. We've got 4 customers lined up to start the MSP with, with more in the next few months.
So basically I'm doing hands-on everyday tech and building the service delivery function at the same time, which is why I'm stuck between the two titles.
Curious what this sub thinks:
- Which title carries more weight with clients/employers down the line?
- Does "IT Service Delivery Manager" oversell it if I'm still the one doing basic tier 1 tickets and closing tickets myself?
- Does "Sys Admin" undersell the fact that I'm building the whole stack and process from zero?
- Are there any other titles I'm overlooking?
Appreciate any input from people who've been in a similar build-out role.
For more context on my background: at the previous MSP I handled a bit of everything, user onboarding/offboarding, basic network troubleshooting, printer support ranging from Zebra label printers to massive production printers like the Konica Minolta AccurioPress C2070, Group Policy management in AD, migrating domain controllers to new servers, email setup (DKIM, SPF, DNS records), assisting with on-prem to cloud migrations, provisioning and decommissioning computers, VPN support (mainly SonicWall NetExtender), IP reservations, and supporting end users through Microsoft tenant migrations, helping with SOC alerts, eg, revoking sessions, doing mfa again, checking for email rules, etc etc.
Source: r/sysadmin · by /u/new_beginnings_456