Systemd is only really required if you want to run gnome or kde easily. It's not an issue otherwise. Probably more trouble than it's worth to replace it in a distro that uses it by default though!
I don't think as a user you actually can remove systemd at all. Everything is set up to work with it. Removing systemd would be closer to forking the distro and maintaining it yourself. If you wanted to avoid systemd you would have to pick a distro which doesn't use it.
