Systems administrators
Most tasks score high and the scores agree. Expect the role to be reorganised.
Exposure is not job loss: it shows how much of the work generative AI could do today. Whether that turns into transformation, productivity gains or cuts depends on employers, regulation — and on you.
0 = today’s generative AI cannot perform any of the job’s tasks, 100 = it could do all of them fully. The pale band is the spread across tasks.
Work out your own score ↓What can you do?
🤖 Written with AIThis text was written by artificial intelligence from the data points shown; it is built on verified figures but may contain mistakes.· 12/10/2026How is it made?
With an exposure score of 57/100, systems administrators face automated routine monitoring, scripting, and configuration recommendations, yet strong projected European employment growth reinforces resilient demand for human infrastructure oversight.
What changes
- Automating routine network performance monitoring, log anomaly detection, and access coordination consoles.
- AI-assisted evaluation of configuration changes, capacity planning, and hardware or software requirement forecasting.
- Synthesizing automated backup scripts, routine patch deployments, and disaster recovery verification workflows.
What stays human
- Hands-on physical hardware troubleshooting, data center cabling, and physical component replacements.
- Complex root-cause diagnosis of novel multi-system outages and interdependent legacy software failures.
- High-stakes disaster recovery decision-making and cross-team security trade-offs during live incidents.
What to learn
- Infrastructure as Code tooling and declarative configuration management using Terraform or Ansible.
- Integrating AI-driven observability and telemetry platforms into automated incident alerting pipelines.
- Hybrid-cloud architecture migration, zero-trust network access, and resilient disaster recovery planning.
Task by task
The ILO scored every task of the occupation separately, as the average of two AI models (GPT-4o and Gemini). The pale band is the range between the two models' scores, the dot the ILO's final score (for a few tasks expert review placed it outside the band).
- Recommending changes to improve systems and network configurations, and determining hardware or software requirements related to such changes61
- Maintaining and administering computer networks and related computing environments including computer hardware, systems software, applications software and all configurations59
- Operating master consoles to monitor the performance of computer systems and networks, and to coordinate computer network access and use.59
- Performing data backups and disaster recovery operations57
- Diagnosing hardware and software problems48
How much does it affect you?
Every job is different: mark which of these tasks you do and how much, and we'll compute your own, time-weighted score.
For each task: I don't do it · sometimes · most of my job.
- Recommending changes to improve systems and network configurations, and determining hardware or software requirements related to such changes(61)
- Maintaining and administering computer networks and related computing environments including computer hardware, systems software, applications software and all configurations(59)
- Operating master consoles to monitor the performance of computer systems and networks, and to coordinate computer network access and use.(59)
- Performing data backups and disaster recovery operations(57)
- Diagnosing hardware and software problems(48)
You are exactly at the occupation average. (The occupation's score: 57.)
About 80% of your working time goes to highly exposed tasks (score ≥ 50).
- • Recommending changes to improve systems and network configurations, and determining hardware or software requirements related to such changes
- • Maintaining and administering computer networks and related computing environments including computer hardware, systems software, applications software and all configurations
- • Diagnosing hardware and software problems
- • Performing data backups and disaster recovery operations
An estimate from the ILO task scores. Everything is computed in your browser — nothing is sent or stored.
How many people work in this occupational group?
Share of the Information and communications technology professionals group in total employment, by country (Eurostat, ISCO 2-digit — 4-digit breakdowns are not public by country).
Table view
| Country | Information and communications technology professionals |
|---|---|
| Luxembourg | 5.7% · 19 thousand · 2025 |
| Sweden | 5.6% · 297 thousand · 2025 |
| Netherlands | 4.9% · 485 thousand · 2025 |
| Finland | 4.3% · 112 thousand · 2025 |
| Lithuania | 4.1% · 60 thousand · 2025 |
| Switzerland | 4.1% · 196 thousand · 2025 |
| Ireland | 4.0% · 111 thousand · 2025 |
| Estonia | 3.9% · 27 thousand · 2025 |
| Belgium | 3.6% · 186 thousand · 2025 |
| United Kingdom | 3.5% · 1,206 thousand · 2025 |
| Denmark | 3.3% · 103 thousand · 2025 |
| Norway | 3.2% · 94 thousand · 2025 |
| Portugal | 3.2% · 167 thousand · 2025 |
| Austria | 3.1% · 138 thousand · 2025 |
| France | 3.0% · 893 thousand · 2025 |
| Poland | 3.0% · 520 thousand · 2025 |
| Cyprus | 2.9% · 15 thousand · 2025 |
| Iceland | 2.9% · 7 thousand · 2025 |
| Hungary | 2.9% · 134 thousand · 2025 |
| Latvia | 2.9% · 25 thousand · 2025 |
| Czechia | 2.8% · 147 thousand · 2025 |
| Germany | 2.7% · 1,149 thousand · 2025 |
| Bulgaria | 2.7% · 79 thousand · 2025 |
| Malta | 2.7% · 9 thousand · 2025 |
| Slovenia | 2.5% · 25 thousand · 2025 |
| Slovakia | 2.4% · 64 thousand · 2025 |
| Croatia | 2.2% · 38 thousand · 2025 |
| Romania | 1.5% · 116 thousand · 2025 |
| Spain | 1.4% · 317 thousand · 2025 |
| Greece | 1.4% · 60 thousand · 2025 |
| Italy | 0.8% · 191 thousand · 2025 |
What do they earn?
Mean gross monthly earnings in the major occupational group (Professionals). Eurostat's earnings survey only publishes pay by occupation at 1 digit, so this is the job's broader group. Enterprises with 10+ employees, 2022.
By country, at purchasing power parity (PPS/month), so countries with different price levels can be compared.
- Switzerland6,389
- Luxembourg5,274
- Ireland4,873
- Germany4,807
- Belgium4,799
- Denmark4,446
- Norway4,237
- Austria4,099
- Netherlands4,031
- Iceland3,875
- EU273,850
- France3,791
- Finland3,769
- Romania3,559
- Sweden3,416
- Spain3,413
- Slovenia3,326
- Italy3,305
- Cyprus3,271
- Lithuania3,221
- Croatia2,890
- Czechia2,871
- Malta2,825
- Poland2,783
- Hungary2,777
- Portugal2,755
- Latvia2,671
- Estonia2,599
- Bulgaria2,359
- Slovakia2,345
- Greece2,321
Source: Eurostat Structure of Earnings Survey (earn_ses22_21), every four years. The United Kingdom is not covered by the survey.
Outlook to 2035
Employment in the Information and communications technology professionals group according to Cedefop's 2026 forecast.
thousand · Cedefop Skills Forecast 2026 · 2026–2035: projection
Replacement demand is the jobs left by people retiring or changing careers — even a shrinking occupation can have many openings.
Related occupations
Sources: ILO WP140 (2025) · Eurostat lfsa_egai2d · Cedefop Skills Forecast 2026 · WEF Future of Jobs 2025 · ESCO. The exposure score measures how much of an occupation's tasks generative AI could perform — not whether the job disappears. For information only, not career advice. How do we calculate this?