As far as I know, system administrators (in general) are responsible for managing, overseeing and maintaining a multiuser computing environment, such as a local area network (LAN) and various other tasks such as installing and configuring system hardware and software, establishing and managing user accounts, upgrading software and backup and recovery tasks.

But obviously it differs from organization to organization but I’m writing a story (not based on Edward Snowden by the way) and I want to know, is it accurate if I said my character (an N.S.A systems administrator) works with “sensitive top-secret U.S government surveillance programs and documents”?

Do N.S.A systems administrators work directly with such programs and do they have access to sensitive documents such as the type Edward Snowden leaked (if not, which title would be more suitable for this), or are they only responsible for actual system administrator tasks such as the ones mentioned above? Hope my question makes sense…