Principal Core Infrastructure Engineer

The engineer will help deliver reliable platforms that enable controlled information sharing between networks operating at different security levels.  The ideal candidate has broad systems infrastructure experience, understands security-first engineering, and can troubleshoot complex interactions across compute, storage, networking, virtualization, identity, and cross-domain components. This person should be comfortable working in highly controlled environments, translating security requirements into practical designs, and collaborating with security, network, application, accreditation, and operations teams.

Key Responsibilities

• System Design & Architecture - Scalability, Reliability, and Performance:
  • Design, deploy, configure, and maintain the infrastructure that hosts or integrates with Cross Domain Solutions.
  • Integrate CDS technologies such as data diodes, guards, transfer solutions, access solutions, and protocol or content-filtering services.
  • Develop technical designs, implementation plans, configuration standards, system diagrams, test procedures, and operational documentation.
  • Build and design fault-tolerant components and systems capable of withstanding in-service updates by implementing redundancy, replication, and automatic failover mechanisms. 
  • Define scalability requirements for owned components and ensure design and implementation requirements are met. 
  • Define key performance indicators (KPIs) and telemetry to identify gaps or issues in running systems. 
  • Build and customize moderately complex dashboards, telemetry systems, and alerting mechanisms to proactively monitor components and system health.
  • Implement data replication and synchronization techniques to maintain data integrity and availability.
• Compliance & Security:
  • Support security assessment and authorization activities by implementing controls, producing technical evidence, and resolving findings.
  • Apply system hardening guidance, configuration baselines, vulnerability remediation, patching, and lifecycle-management practices.
• Operational Troubleshooting & Incident Management:
  • Troubleshoot complex issues across infrastructure, applications, networks, security controls, and CDS components.
  • Monitor platform health, performance, capacity, and availability; identify risks before they affect mission services.
  • Participate in incident response, root-cause analysis, change management, and problem-management activities.
  • Serve in operational support rotations, providing guidance in incident response and root cause investigations.
• Automation & Change Management:
  • Automate provisioning, configuration, compliance validation, and routine operational tasks where appropriate.
  • Develop and maintain automation scripts and tools (e.g., Infrastructure as Code (IaC)) to manage cloud infrastructure. 
  • Create and adhere to change management plans for patching, updating, and rolling back applications, and begin designing systems and components to allow for automation of these processes.
  • Plan and execute upgrades, migrations, capacity improvements, and technology refreshes with minimal operational disruption.

Core Responsibilities

• Planning & Execution:
  • Manage and coordinate moderately complex tasks, monitoring timelines and deliverables to ensure timely completion and adherence to requirements for a moderately-sized project or initiative. Efficiently delegate, monitor, and prioritize work across multiple projects, providing technical oversight and adjusting plans to address shifts in resources or timelines.
• Collaboration & Partnership:
  • Collaborate across the organization to align expectations and achieve shared objectives. Leverage understanding of business leaders, stakeholders, and/or customers to ensure proposed solutions meet their needs. Support inclusivity by actively seeking and listening to diverse perspectives, ensuring others feel heard and respected.
  • Work closely with cybersecurity, network engineering, enterprise architecture, application teams, vendors, and mission stakeholders.
  • Provide technical guidance to other engineers and contribute to engineering standards and reusable solutions.
• Problem Solving:
  • Identify and address moderately complex issues by analyzing a wide range of data and/or information to identify solutions in accordance with standard practices. Proactively escalate unresolved or critical issues with a thorough assessment and suggest potential solutions. Review, contribute to, and document problem solving strategies.
• Continuous Learning:
  • Pursue learning opportunities to expand knowledge and skills and/or tools in new areas and sta