Modernization SME

Acuity, Inc.; Washington, Baltimore (District of Columbia, MD); On-site; USD 108,000 - 221,000; Full time

Job summary

Acuity, Inc. is seeking a Senior Modernization SME to lead enterprise infrastructure modernization for government missions. You will assess legacy environments, develop roadmaps, reduce technical debt, and guide secure, resilient solutions across data centers, virtualization, cloud, and automation.

Responsibilities include advising on IaC, DevSecOps, and secure-by-design practices, while coordinating with leadership and engineering teams to deliver scalable, mission-aligned outcomes.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of 12+ years in enterprise infrastructure modernization, systems engineering, cloud, or related modernization initiatives.
• Minimum of 7+ years leading large-scale modernization initiatives.
• Experience assessing legacy environments and developing roadmaps addressing debt, risk, and lifecycle sustainability.
• Broad knowledge of compute, Windows/Linux, virtualization, storage, networking, and observability.

Responsibilities

• Serve as senior technical advisor for enterprise modernization initiatives across data centers, virtualization, cloud, cybersecurity, automation, and observability.
• Develop modernization strategies to improve security, scalability, resiliency, and operational efficiency.
• Assess legacy infrastructure and identify modernization opportunities through refresh, virtualization, cloud adoption, and platform consolidation.
• Collaborate with government stakeholders to translate mission objectives into practical roadmaps and strategies.
• Provide technical leadership for large-scale modernization efforts and evaluate alternatives for mission benefit and risk.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic thinking

Stakeholder communication

Mentoring

Governance

Risk assessment

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

VMware

Kubernetes

OpenShift

Terraform

Job description

Overview

Looking to make a difference and help modernize critical government missions? Join Acuity's team of experts supporting the U.S. Department of State. As the Modernization SME, you will serve as the senior technical advisor responsible for advancing enterprise infrastructure and technology modernization across data centers, virtualization, cloud, cybersecurity, automation, observability, data protection, and application dependencies. Working closely with government leadership, architects, engineers, and program management, you will assess legacy environments, develop modernization roadmaps, reduce technical debt and lifecycle risk, and guide implementation of secure, resilient, supportable, and sustainable enterprise solutions that improve mission delivery and operational efficiency.

Overview

Looking to make a difference and help modernize critical government missions? Join Acuity's team of experts supporting the U.S. Department of State. As the Modernization SME, you will serve as the senior technical advisor responsible for advancing enterprise infrastructure and technology modernization across data centers, virtualization, cloud, cybersecurity, automation, observability, data protection, and application dependencies. Working closely with government leadership, architects, engineers, and program management, you will assess legacy environments, develop modernization roadmaps, reduce technical debt and lifecycle risk, and guide implementation of secure, resilient, supportable, and sustainable enterprise solutions that improve mission delivery and operational efficiency.

Why Acuity?

Are you ready to use your expertise in the areas of IT Modernization, Data Enablement, and Hyperautomation to make a real difference? Join Acuity, Inc., a technology consulting firm that supports federal agencies. We combine industry partnerships and long-term federal experience with innovative technical leadership to support our customers' critical missions.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the senior technical advisor for enterprise infrastructure and technology modernization initiatives spanning data center transformation, compute, virtualization, storage, data protection, hybrid cloud, cybersecurity, automation, observability, application dependencies, and enterprise operations.
• Develop and recommend modernization strategies that improve security, scalability, resiliency, operational efficiency, and long-term sustainability of enterprise systems.
• Assess legacy enterprise infrastructure and identify modernization opportunities through technology refresh, virtualization modernization, platform consolidation, cloud adoption, storage and data protection modernization, automation, and selective application or cloud-native transformation.
• Collaborate with government stakeholders, architects, and engineering teams to translate mission objectives into practical modernization roadmaps and implementation strategies.
• Provide technical leadership for large-scale modernization efforts involving data center transformation, virtualization modernization, cloud adoption, platform consolidation, technology refresh, storage modernization, data protection, automation, Zero Trust implementation, application dependencies, and operational transformation.
• Evaluate modernization alternatives for mission benefit, interoperability, cybersecurity, resiliency, technical risk, lifecycle cost, operational impact, scalability, maintainability, supportability, and long-term sustainability.
• Advise technical teams on Infrastructure as Code (IaC), configuration management, automation, DevSecOps, secure-by-design principles, continuous monitoring, and standardized operational practices for infrastructure engineering and operations.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity teams to ensure modernization efforts comply with NIST RMF, NIST SP 800-53, FedRAMP, FISMA, Zero Trust Architecture, and Department of State security requirements.
• Evaluate workload placement and migration options across on-premises, virtualized, hybrid-cloud, and public-cloud environments, applying working knowledge of application architecture, APIs, containers, Kubernetes, and cloud-native technologies to assess dependencies and advise on hosting and migration decisions.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, infrastructure lifecycle requirements, end-of-life/end-of-support risks, enterprise observability, capacity and performance needs, AI-enabled automation, and modernization capabilities to reduce technical debt and operational risk.
• Support Authority to Operate (ATO) activities by providing technical expertise for architecture reviews, security documentation, system assessments, and compliance evidence.
• Develop infrastructure modernization roadmaps, technical recommendations, implementation and migration plans, architecture documentation, executive briefings, and technology assessments that account for production availability, operational continuity, cybersecurity compliance, recovery capability, and supportability.
• Mentor architects, engineers, and technical teams while promoting engineering excellence, collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement.
• Provide technical leadership during modernization planning sessions, architecture reviews, technical working groups, and executive briefings.
• Perform additional duties as assigned in support of customer mission objectives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Cybersecurity, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Minimum of twelve (12) years of experience supporting enterprise infrastructure modernization, systems engineering, cloud engineering, data center transformation, virtualization, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, or related technology modernization initiatives.
• Minimum of seven (7) years leading or advising large-scale infrastructure modernization initiatives involving data center transformation, virtualization modernization, cloud adoption, platform consolidation, technology refresh, automation, storage modernization, data protection, or operational transformation.
• Demonstrated experience assessing legacy enterprise infrastructure and developing modernization roadmaps addressing technical debt, end-of-life/end-of-support technology, capacity, cybersecurity, resiliency, operational risk, and lifecycle sustainability.
• Broad technical knowledge of enterprise compute, Windows and Linux platforms, virtualization, VMware, enterprise storage, networking dependencies, data protection, disaster recovery, monitoring and observability, hybrid cloud, and infrastructure automation.
• Experience evaluating workload placement and migration options across on-premises, virtualized, hybrid-cloud, and public-cloud environments.
• Experience applying Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, automation, and DevSecOps principles to infrastructure engineering and operations.
• Experience planning modernization while maintaining production availability, operational continuity, cybersecurity compliance, recovery capability, and supportability.
• Experience evaluating infrastructure modernization alternatives based on mission benefit, cybersecurity, technical risk, lifecycle cost, operational impact, scalability, maintainability, and long-term sustainability.
• Working knowledge of application architecture, APIs, containers, Kubernetes, and cloud-native technologies sufficient to assess application dependencies and advise on infrastructure hosting and migration decisions.
• Strong understanding of NIST RMF, NIST SP 800-53, FISMA, FedRAMP, Zero Trust Architecture, and security requirements affecting Federal infrastructure modernization.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to advise executive leadership, government stakeholders, architects, engineers, and operations teams on complex modernization decisions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Engineering, or related field.
• Technical certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional, Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Google Professional Cloud Architect, CISSP, CCSP, TOGAF, SAFe Agilist, or Security+.
• Experience supporting the U.S. Department of State or other federal civilian agencies.
• Experience leading data center transformation, infrastructure lifecycle modernization, enterprise virtualization, storage/data protection modernization, hybrid-cloud adoption, or large-scale operational transformation.
• Experience implementing Zero Trust Architecture, Secure-by-Design principles, AI-enabled automation, enterprise observability, or cloud-native modernization.
• Experience with VMware, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk, ServiceNow, Terraform Enterprise, or comparable enterprise platforms.
• Experience supporting modernization initiatives within classified or high-security federal environments.

Clearance Requirement

• Active Secret or Top Secret security clearance required.

Min

USD $108,000.00/Yr.

Max

USD $221,000.00/Yr.

Salary Range

The salary range for this position represents Acuity's good faith estimate of the compensation for this job title at the time of posting. Final compensation will be determined based on factors including, but not limited to, the candidate's qualifications, experience, education, certifications, skills, geographic location, contract requirements, applicable labor categories, and, where applicable, contract award and funding.