Hybrid PKI Operations Engineer - DoD Enterprise CA

August Schell; Fort Meade (MD); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

August Schell is seeking a PKI Operations Engineer to sustain and operate DoD enterprise Public Key Infrastructure in support of the DISA customer, focusing on RHCS, CA availability, patch cycles, and automation.

The role requires on-site Fort Meade visits as requested, collaboration with product engineering and government teams, and driving PQC migration while maintaining high-volume CA reliability.

Qualifications

• Active Secret clearance minimum (Top Secret preferred).
• Local to the DMV area with the ability to work on site at Fort Meade.
• 5+ years of relevant systems/operations engineering experience.
• Strong Linux (RHEL) systems administration and patch management.
• Knowledge of Linux containers and container orchestration (Podman / Docker) and VMs (KVM).
• Hands-on experience operating PKI, x.509, cryptography, and security technologies.
• Direct experience operating RHCS; Dogtag PKI or comparable enterprise CA platforms.
• Scripting/automation proficiency (Python, Bash).
• DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II certification (Security+ or equivalent).
• Strong written and verbal communication; documenting runbooks.

Responsibilities

• Operate and sustain the production PKI environment on RHCS; CA availability and issuance health.
• Run RA/CRL/OCSP operations; manage certificate lifecycles and ACME automation.
• Onboard new customers/enclaves; configure and harden environments to standards.
• Own CVE remediation and patch management for PKI stack and RHEL hosts.
• Monitor system health; build and maintain alerts, logs, dashboards; lead root-cause analysis.
• Operate and troubleshoot HSM integrations (Entrust nShield / Thales Luna).
• Automate operational tasks using scripting and CI/CD tooling.
• Support PQC migration from an operations perspective (algorithm rollout, validation).
• Provide development support in an operational capacity; reproduce issues for engineering.
• Communicate across stakeholders; document runbooks and escalate risks before impact.

Skills

RHEL Linux administration

PKI operations

Scripting (Python/Bash)

Security clearance

Containerization (Podman/Docker)

RHCS / Dogtag PKI

VMs (KVM)

HSM operations

Tools

RHCS

Entrust nShield

Thales Luna

Podman

Docker

KVM

Python

Job description

August Schell is seeking a PKI Operations Engineer to sustain and operate DoD enterprise Public Key Infrastructure in support of the DISA customer, focusing on RHCS, CA availability, patch cycles, and automation.

The role requires on-site Fort Meade visits as requested, collaboration with product engineering and government teams, and driving PQC migration while maintaining high-volume CA reliability.