Position Overview - This is a direct hire for AppGate

The Principal Federal Solution Architect serves as the senior technical authority responsible for the design, integration, automation, and operational success of Appgate's Zero Trust Network Access platform across U.S. Federal and Department of Defense environments.

This role requires deep, hands on engineering expertise rather than high level or presentation based knowledge. The ideal candidate can operate systems, write and review code, debug live integrations, and troubleshoot failures at the protocol, operating system, and application level.

This position is designed for practitioners who build, integrate, and operate secure access systems in real world Federal environments.

Technical Depth Expectations

Candidates must demonstrate operational competence across all domains, including the ability to

• Configure and operate systems directly
• Debug failures using logs, shell access, packet captures, and code inspection
• Write and modify scripts or automation to solve real problems
• Explain system behavior based on implementation rather than abstraction

Engineers who primarily work at the diagram or presentation level will not be successful in this role.

Core Responsibilities and Required Expertise

Linux Systems and Access Enforcement Platforms (Critical)

• Serve as a technical authority for Linux based Zero Trust enforcement infrastructure
• Operate and manage systems via SSH including secure key based access and privilege separation
• Demonstrate deep hands on knowledge of Bash scripting, process management, systemd, filesystem layout, permissions, and logging
• Strong understanding of Linux networking internals including routing tables, policy routing, interface binding, traffic steering, and iptables or nftables
• Diagnose complex cross platform issues where Linux enforcement points interact with Windows and macOS endpoints

JavaScript and REST API Integration Engineering (Critical)

• Develop and maintain JavaScript based logic executed on Appgate appliances to enable integration and automation
• Build and troubleshoot REST API integrations with external systems including Microsoft Graph API and ServiceNow
• Apply strong understanding of RESTful API design, JSON data models, schema validation, and authentication methods such as OAuth, tokens, and certificates
• Operate within an API first, Everything as Code architecture

Containers and Kubernetes Architecture

• Architect Zero Trust access enforcement for containerized and microservices based workloads
• Support Kubernetes environments including sidecar injection, operator based enforcement models, secure service exposure, and service to service access
• Integrate with Kubernetes networking, ingress, and egress controls
• Ensure access models scale across on premises and cloud native environments

Automation, Infrastructure as Code and Configuration as Code

• Design and implement Infrastructure as Code using Terraform
• Implement Configuration as Code and GitOps workflows for policies, entitlements, and integrations
• Integrate Zero Trust deployments into CI CD pipelines aligned with Federal DevSecOps standards
• Ensure automation is version controlled, repeatable, auditable, and API driven

Identity and Authentication Engineering (Critical)

• Architect identity centric access solutions using enterprise identity systems as the authoritative control plane
• Deep expertise with Active Directory including multi domain and multi forest environments, domain controllers, LDAP and LDAPS binding behavior, and Kerberos authentication flows
• Design and troubleshoot DNS architecture across Windows, macOS, and Linux
• Support machine certificate authentication, PKI trust chains, certificate lifecycle and revocation, and SAML or OIDC authentication
• Understand how identity, DNS, and routing failures manifest as access control issues

Modern Cloud and Infrastructure Excellence

• Architect level knowledge of VMware, ESXi, and KVM for private cloud deployments
• Architect and implement security services within AWS Gov