Infrastructure Engineer/Architect

acuCyber; Charleston (SC); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

acuCyber is seeking a Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) SME to guide strategy and architecture for secure mission services operating under constrained connectivity.

This full-time, on-site role at a Government facility in Charleston, SC or the National Capital Region (NCR) requires expertise at the intersection of tactical communications, systems engineering, and advanced cybersecurity, with emphasis on Zero Trust and edge-capable ICAM solutions.

Qualifications

• Experience designing or fielding systems for DDIL environments.
• Strong understanding of Zero Trust principles and continuous verification.

Responsibilities

• Develop DDIL strategies and implementation roadmaps for mission applications.
• Define operational scenarios and connectivity constraints with mission owners.
• Translate scenarios into local autonomy, bandwidth, latency, and recovery requirements.
• Define which identity, authorization, and data protection capabilities must operate locally.
• Architect local identity services, including virtual directories and caching of security information.
• Establish approaches for cached attribute freshness and credential expiration awareness.
• Evaluate access control tradeoffs for degraded service scenarios.
• Design synchronization and reconnection approaches for conflicting updates.
• Define dependencies among applications, identity providers, policy services, and key management.

Skills

DDIL experience

Zero Trust

ICAM

Policy enforcement

Edge computing

Cryptography

Tools

PDP/PEP concepts

Job description

acuCyber is seeking a Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) Subject Matter Expert to guide strategy and architecture for secure mission services operating under constrained connectivity. This role focuses on operating at the intersection of tactical communications, systems engineering, and advanced cybersecurity, this role addresses the unique technical challenges of enforcing Zero Trust principles (continuous verification, least privilege access, explicit risk-based attestation) when continuous reachback to enterprise identity providers, policy engines, and cloud trust brokers is degraded or entirely severed. The engineer will establish resilient Policy Enforcement Points (PEP) and decentralized Policy Decision Points (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 conditions and understands the tradeoffs involved. The SME will help Government stakeholders and engineering teams determine which capabilities must operate locally, what information can be cached or replicated, how long that information remains trustworthy, and how systems reconnect safely. Success requires sound technical judgment grounded in mission needs and experience beyond traditional enterprise availability planning.

This is a full-time, on-site role at a Government facility in Charleston, SC or the National Capital Region (NCR).

What You’ll Do:

• Develop DDIL strategies, architectural approaches, and implementation roadmaps for mission 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 protection capabilities must remain available without enterprise reach back.
• Architect local identity and attribute services, including virtual directories and approved caching of security information.
• Establish approaches for cached attribute freshness, credential expiration, revocation awareness, authorization policy updates, and operation when authoritative sources cannot be reached.
• Evaluate access control tradeoffs, including when services should deny access, permit bounded 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 and disconnected environments, including approved cross-domain interfaces.
• Develop architecture diagrams, interface requirements, alternatives analyses, risk assessments, and phased implementation recommendations.
• Support agreements and approval documentation governing the caching and use of identity and security attributes.
• Guide prototypes and demonstrations that validate architectural assumptions under representative 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, and engineering teams to resolve architectural gaps and guide implementation.