PKI Operations Engineer

AUGUST SCHELL ENTERPRISES, INC.; Fort Meade (MD); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

August Schell Enterprises, Inc. seeks a PKI Operations Engineer to sustain and operate a DoD PKI environment in support of a DISA customer at Fort Meade. The role focuses on RHCS, CA availability, certificate lifecycle, and CVE remediation, with automation to reduce toil.

You will work hybrid and on-site as requested, collaborating with government and contractor teams, and supporting PQC migration and operational modernization efforts.

Qualifications

• Active Secret clearance minimum (Top Secret preferred).
• Local to the DMV area with ability to work on site at Fort Meade.
• Five+ years of relevant systems/operations engineering experience.
• Strong Linux (RHEL) systems administration and patching.
• Experience with PKI, x.509, cryptography and security technologies.

Responsibilities

• Operate and sustain the production PKI environment on RHCS.
• Manage RA/CRL/OCSP operations and certificate lifecycle at scale.
• onboard new customers, enclaves, and use cases onto the PKI.
• Own CVE remediation and patch management for PKI and hosts.
• Monitor system health; build alerting, logging, dashboards; incident response.
• Operate and troubleshoot HSM integrations supporting CA operations.

Skills

PKI operations

RHEL Linux

Python/Bash scripting

ACME/CA automation

HSM operations

RHCS/Dogtag

Tools

RHCS (Red Hat Certificate System)

Podman/Docker

KVM virtualization

LDAP/Directory Services

Job description

PKI Operations Engineer

Ft. Meade, MD — Full Time (Hybrid)

August Schell is looking for a PKI Operations Engineer to sustain andoperateDoD enterprise Public Key Infrastructure in support of our DISA customer. This is a Red Hat Certificate System (RHCS) solution. Where our PKI Software Engineer builds the next-generation certificate-systems code, this role keeps the infrastructure running: operating and hardening the live RHCS environment, standing up new customers and enclaves, driving CVE remediation and patch cycles, monitoring system health, and automating the operational toil that keeps a high-volume CA reliable. The engineer workshand-in-handwith commercial product engineering, government operations teams, and other program contractors — including through the environment's post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration.

Individuals in this role must be able to work hybrid and go on site at Fort Meade as requested.

Responsibilities Include

• Operate and sustain the production PKI environment on Red Hat Certificate System (RHCS) — CA availability, certificate lifecycle operations, and the day-to-day health of the issuance pipeline

• Run RA/CRL/OCSP operations and certificate lifecycle management, including the transition to shorter-lived certificates at higher issuance volume (ACME automation)

• Onboard new customers, enclaves, and use cases onto the PKI — configuration, integration, and secure hardening of new environments to program standards

• Own CVE remediation and patch management for the PKI stack and its underlying RHEL hosts — track, test, schedule, and apply security patches with minimal disruption to CA operations

• Monitor system health and performance; build andmaintainalerting, logging, and dashboards; respond to and resolve operational incidents, and lead root-cause analysis

• Operate and troubleshoot HSM integrations (EntrustnShield/ Thales Luna) supporting CA operations and key escrow

• Automate operational tasks — health checks, backups, certificate/CRL monitoring,deploymentand configuration — using scripting and CI/CD tooling to reduce toil and manual error

• Support the program's PQC migration from an operations standpoint (algorithm rollout, version transition, validation in the live environment)

• Provide development support in an operational capacity asadditionalvalue — small fixes, config-as-code, tooling, and reproduction of issues for the product engineering team — without owning the core feature-development backlog

• Communicate clearly across government operations stakeholders, commercial vendor engineering, and program contractors; document runbooks and elevate risks and blockers before theyimpactoperations

Requirements

• Active Secret clearance minimum (Top Secret preferred and may berequired)

• Local to the DMV area with the ability to work on site at Fort Meade as requested

• Five (5)+years of relevant systems/operations engineering experience (flexible for candidates with exceptional PKI depth)

• Strong Linux (RHEL) systems administration and operations background, including patch management and system hardening

• Knowledge or experience with Linux containers and container orchestration (Podman/ Docker) and VMs (KVM)

• Hands-on experience operating PKI, x.509, cryptography, and system/software security technologies

• Direct experienceoperatingRed Hat Certificate System (RHCS) — this is a Red Hat solution.DogtagPKI experience (RHCS's upstream open-source project) is an accepted alternative skillset, as is comparable enterprise CA platform operations (EJBCA, Microsoft AD CS, Entrust Authority, ISCCertAgent, or similar)

• Scripting/automationproficiency(Python, Bash, or similar) for operational tooling

• DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II certification (Security+ or equivalent)

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a habit of documenting runbooks and operational procedures

Stand Out With

• Prior DISA or DoD PKI program operations experience (Purebred, derived credentials, RA/CRL/OCSP operations at scale)

• HSM operations experience (EntrustnShield, Thales Luna) — the customer runs Entrust HSMs

• ACME protocol and certificate automation at scale

• Post-quantum cryptography familiarity (ML-DSA/Dilithium, Kyber, CNSA 2.0 timelines) from a migration/operations lens

• Configuration management and infrastructure-as-code (Ansible, or similar)

• Directory Server / LDAP operations experience

• Monitoring/observability tooling (Prometheus/Grafana, ELK, or similar) and incident response

• Agile / ITSM operating rhythms (Scrum, JIRA, change management)