DDIL SME - Infrastructure Engineer/Architecture

Accelera Solutions; Charleston, Washington (SC, District of Columbia); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Accelera Solutions is seeking an on-site DDIL SME to guide secure mission services architecture in Charleston, SC or DC area. The role emphasizes Zero Trust, edge compute, and local autonomy for degraded connectivity, with TS/SCI clearance and CI polygraph eligibility.

The engineer will design policy enforcement points, PDPs, ICAM strategies, and secure data handling across disconnected environments while coordinating with government stakeholders and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Active TS/SCI with CI Polygraph eligibility.
• Experience designing or fielding systems for denied/disrupted/ intermittent connectivity.
• Ability to translate constraints into technical requirements and testable criteria.
• Understanding of distributed systems, replication, caching and recovery.
• Experience with ICAM, identity services, and local attribute caching.
• Knowledge of data protection, PKI, and cross-domain interfaces.

Responsibilities

• Develop DDIL strategies, architectural roadmaps, and implementation plans.
• Define operational scenarios, connectivity constraints, and degraded service levels.
• Translate scenarios into local autonomy, bandwidth use, latency, and recovery requirements.
• Specify local identity, directory, and data protection capabilities.
• Architect local identity services, including virtual directories and caching.
• Establish caching of attributes, credential expiry, and policy updates when central services unavailable.
• Evaluate access control tradeoffs and offline operation.
• Design synchronization and reconnection approaches for data integrity.
• Define dependencies among applications, policy services, and key management.
• Assess data placement, replication, and protection across connected/disconnected environments.
• Create architecture diagrams, risk assessments, and phased implementation plans.

Skills

TS/SCI clearance

Zero Trust

Edge compute

ICAM

Policy Enforcement Points

Policy Decision Points

HA/Disaster recovery

Network impairment testing

HWIL testing

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Red Hat OpenShift

Job description

DDIL SME - Infrastructure Engineer/Architecture

Description

This position is full time, on site in either Charleston, SC or Washington, DC metro area. Candidates must live in either of those areas as position is full time on site. This position requires the candidate have an Active Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance with the ability to obtain a Counterintelligence (CI) Polygraph.

Accelera Solutions is seeking a Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) SubjectMatter Expert to guide strategy and architecture for secure mission services operating underconstrained connectivity. This role focuses on operating at the intersection of tacticalcommunications, systems engineering, and advanced cybersecurity, this role addresses theunique technical challenges of enforcing Zero Trust principles (continuous verification, least
privilege access, explicit risk-based attestation) when continuous reachback to enterprise identityproviders, policy engines, and cloud trust brokers is degraded or entirely severed. The engineerwill establish resilient Policy Enforcement Points (PEP) and decentralized Policy DecisionPoints (PDP), architect edge-capable Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM)solutions, and optimize cryptographic overhead across constrained tactical data links.

We are looking for someone who has designed, evaluated, or fielded systems for these conditionsand understands the tradeoffs involved. The SME will help Government stakeholders andengineering teams determine which capabilities must operate locally, what information can becached or replicated, how long that information remains trustworthy, and how systems reconnectsafely. Success requires sound technical judgment grounded in mission needs and experiencebeyond traditional enterprise availability planning.

What You’ll Do:

• Develop DDIL strategies, architectural approaches, and implementation roadmaps formission applications and supporting security services.
• Work with mission owners to define operational scenarios, connectivity constraints,mission priorities, and acceptable levels of degraded service.
• Translate those scenarios into requirements for local autonomy, bandwidth use, latency,outage duration, synchronization, and recovery.
• Define which identity, authorization, directory, credential, and data protectioncapabilities must remain available without enterprise reach back.
• Architect local identity and attribute services, including virtual directories and approvedcaching of security information.
• Establish approaches for cached attribute freshness, credential expiration, revocationawareness, authorization policy updates, and operation when authoritative sources cannotbe reached.
• Evaluate access control tradeoffs, including when services should deny access, permitbounded local operation, or require additional safeguards.
• Design synchronization and reconnection approaches that address conflicting updates,stale identity data, audit records, and restoration of enterprise consistency.
• Define dependencies among applications, identity providers, policy services, directories,encryption services, and key management infrastructure.
• Assess data placement, replication, and protection requirements across connected anddisconnected environments, including approved cross-domain interfaces.
• Develop architecture diagrams, interface requirements, alternatives analyses, riskassessments, and phased implementation recommendations.
• Support agreements and approval documentation governing the caching and use ofidentity and security attributes.
• Guide prototypes and demonstrations that validate architectural assumptions underrepresentative network impairments.
• Define measurable acceptance criteria and help teams evaluate mission continuity,security behavior, and recovery during connectivity loss and restoration.
• Coordinate with Government stakeholders, mission partners, security personnel, andengineering teams to resolve architectural gaps and guide implementation.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Active Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance with abilityto obtain a Counterintelligence (CI) Polygraph.
• Demonstrated subject matter expertise designing, evaluating, or fielding systems thatoperate with denied, disrupted, intermittent, or limited connectivity.
• Experience developing mission or enterprise architectures that support disconnected operation, local processing, and eventual synchronization with authoritative services.
• Ability to translate operational constraints into technical requirements, architecturaldecisions, and testable performance criteria
• Understanding of distributed systems concepts, including consistency, replication,caching, conflict resolution, and failure recovery.
• Experience addressing identity, authentication, authorization, or credential dependencieswhen enterprise services are unavailable.
• Understanding of the security implications of stale attributes, delayed revocationinformation, expired credentials, and unavailable policy or key services.
• Experience assessing bandwidth, latency, packet loss, and network availabilityconstraints and their effects on application and service behavior.
• Experience developing technical strategies, architecture documentation, alternatives analyses, and implementation roadmaps.
• Ability to explain architectural tradeoffs and residual risks to Government decisionmakersand provide actionable guidance to engineering teams.
• Experience working across mission, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and applicationdevelopment stakeholders.
• Experience deploying localized Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs) and lightweight PolicyDecision Points (PDPs) on edge compute appliances and dismounted kits.
• Experience conducting modeling, simulation, and hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) testing to replicate tactical link degradation, electronic warfare (EW) effects, and packet-loss profiles.

Desired Qualifications:

• Prior experience supporting the Intelligence Community.
• Bachelors or Masters degree
• Operational DDIL experience: Experience supporting deployed, tactical, expeditionary,edge, or other mission environments with constrained reach back.
• Identity services: Experience with Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM), virtual directories, identity federation, and local identity and attribute caching.
• Authorization design: Experience with attribute-based access control, local policyenforcement, bounded offline access, and synchronization of authorization policies.
• Data protection: Familiarity with Trusted Data Format (TDF), data tagging, encryption,and access enforcement when central services are unavailable.
• Key and certificate services: Experience addressing Public Key Infrastructure (PKI),certificate validation, credential renewal, and key availability in disconnected environments.
• Distributed applications: Experience with store‑and‑forward messaging, durablequeues, retry behavior, duplicate handling, and reconciliation after reconnection.
• Cross‑domain environments: Experience defining approved identity and dataexchanges across security domains and mission partner boundaries.
• Cloud and edge platforms: Familiarity with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes,Red Hat OpenShift, and deployment patterns spanning enterprise and local infrastructure.
• Validation and experimentation: Experience using network impairment testing, faultinjection, or operational demonstrations to assess degraded-mode behavior.
• Zero Trust: Experience adapting identity, device, application, and data security controlsto environments where continuous enterprise connectivity cannot be assumed.
• Segmentation: Experience implementing software-defined micro segmentation, overlaynetworks, and dynamic perimeter controls across non-standard transport channels (e.g.,HF/VHF/UHF, SATCOM, mesh radios, 5G tactical bubbles).

Accelera Solutions is an Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.