Infrastructure Engineer/Architect

acuCyber; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

acuCyber seeks a Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) Subject Matter Expert to guide strategy and architecture for secure mission services with constrained connectivity. The role operates at the intersection of tactical communications, systems engineering, and cybersecurity, focusing on Zero Trust principles when reachback is degraded.

The engineer will establish resilient policy enforcement and decision points, design edge-capable ICAM solutions, and optimize cryptographic

Qualifications

• Experience designing, evaluating, or fielding secure systems for constrained connectivity environments.
• Strong judgment grounded in mission needs and security considerations.
• Ability to coordinate with government stakeholders and engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop DDIL strategies and implementation roadmaps for mission applications and security services.
• Define operational scenarios, connectivity constraints, mission priorities, and degraded service levels.
• Specify local autonomy, bandwidth use, latency, and recovery requirements.
• Identify which identity, authorization, and data protection capabilities must remain local.
• Architect local identity services and secure caching of security information.
• Outline approaches for cache freshness, credential expiry, and urgent updates.

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.