Lead Systems Engineer with Security Clearance

Black Eagle Defense; Fort Meade (MD); On-site; USD 171,000 - 228,000; Full time

Job summary

Black Eagle Defense is seeking a Lead Systems Engineer to join a mission-driven team responsible for the stability, security, and scalability of complex data workflows and a widely used web-based UI.

You will lead a small DevOps/SysAdmin team managing infrastructure across AWS, Kubernetes, and bare-metal. You will architect robust systems, ensure observability, and mentor staff on Ansible, Terraform, and Podman to enable reliable deployments.

Qualifications

• Twelve years of SE experience in similar scope programs.
• Bachelor's degree required; five years extra SE exp may substitute.
• Strong Linux administration (RHEL9).

Responsibilities

• Lead a DevOps/SysAdmin team for end-to-end infrastructure.
• Architect robust systems across hybrid infra (bare-metal, AWS).
• Drive observability, metrics, uptime, and performance improvements.
• Mentor on testing, deployment strategies, and automation tools.

Skills

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

System design

Platform administration

System security

Observability

CI/CD (GitLab)

Documentation

Linux admin

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Kubernetes

Podman

Ansible

Terraform

Packer

Bash

Python

GitLab

AWS (EC2/S3/VPC/IAM)

Job description

Job Description SALARY RANGE $171,000 - $228,000/year.

DUTIES As a successful candidate for the Lead Systems Engineer role, you will join a high-impact, mission-driven team responsible for managing the stability, security, and scalability of systems powering complex data transformation workflows and a widely used web-based user interface. Embedded within a broader engineering organization of 25+ developers, you will lead a small, agile DevOps/SysAdmin team managing end-to-end infrastructure across bare-metal, AWS environments, and Kubernetes deployments. In this position, you will collaborate across software teams to architect robust systems, maintain metrics and observability to track uptime and performance, and mentor team members on testing, deployment strategies, and modern automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, and Podman. This mature, mission-critical project offers a fast-paced, collaborative environment where you will drive high-visibility contributions while supporting technical stability and strong team cohesion.

Required Skills

• Leadership and mentorship of system administration personnel, including daily task management and operational direction
• Cross-functional collaboration and technical support for large-scale engineering teams (25+ developers)
• System design, setup, and architectural guidance in coordination with software development teams
• Platform administration and system health management across hybrid infrastructure (EC2, MASH, bare-metal) across dev and production environments
• System security oversight, routine maintenance, and System Security Plan (SSP) accreditation management
• Full-stack system observability, including automated monitoring, alerting, backups, and disaster recovery planning across all deployment tiers
• CI/CD pipeline and deployment automation management using GitLab
• Technical documentation upkeep, technical reviews, post-mortem facilitation, and continuous operational improvement
• Linux system administration and base RHEL9 kickstart image maintenance

Qualifications

Twelve (12) years of experience as a SE in programs and contracts of similar scope, type, and complexity is required. A bachelor's degree in a related discipline from an accredited college or university is required. Five (5) years of additional SE experience may be substituted for a Bachelor's Degree.

• Strong Linux system administration experience (e.g., RHEL9).
• Proficient in system automation and scripting tools such as Ansible (including Semaphore), Terraform, Packer, Bash, and Python.
• Knowledge of SSP compliance and processes, including STE/STN.
• Experience with containerization such as Podman and Kubernetes.
• Amazon AWS experience (setting up EC2 instances, S3 buckets, VPCs, IAM).
• Metrics and observability with Kibana, Grafana, and Prometheus.
• Familiarity with database administration with databases such as Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Redis, or graph databases (e.g., DGraph).

Desired Skills NICE TO HAVES

• NiFi dataflow experience
• Elastic Stack experience (Logstash, Filebeat, etc.)
• Graph database experience
• Experience with other AWS tools such as EKS, ECS, Lambda, and Secrets Manager
• CI/CD in GitLab
• CNO experience
• Experience facilitating low-to-high development
• Cisco networking experience