PKI Operations Engineer

August Schell; Fort Meade (MD); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

August Schell is seeking a PKI Operations Engineer to sustain and operate DoD enterprise Public Key Infrastructure in support of the DISA customer, focusing on RHCS, CA availability, patch cycles, and automation.

The role requires on-site Fort Meade visits as requested, collaboration with product engineering and government teams, and driving PQC migration while maintaining high-volume CA reliability.

Qualifications

• Active Secret clearance minimum (Top Secret preferred).
• Local to the DMV area with the ability to work on site at Fort Meade.
• 5+ years of relevant systems/operations engineering experience.
• Strong Linux (RHEL) systems administration and patch management.
• Knowledge of Linux containers and container orchestration (Podman / Docker) and VMs (KVM).
• Hands-on experience operating PKI, x.509, cryptography, and security technologies.
• Direct experience operating RHCS; Dogtag PKI or comparable enterprise CA platforms.
• Scripting/automation proficiency (Python, Bash).
• DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II certification (Security+ or equivalent).
• Strong written and verbal communication; documenting runbooks.

Responsibilities

• Operate and sustain the production PKI environment on RHCS; CA availability and issuance health.
• Run RA/CRL/OCSP operations; manage certificate lifecycles and ACME automation.
• Onboard new customers/enclaves; configure and harden environments to standards.
• Own CVE remediation and patch management for PKI stack and RHEL hosts.
• Monitor system health; build and maintain alerts, logs, dashboards; lead root-cause analysis.
• Operate and troubleshoot HSM integrations (Entrust nShield / Thales Luna).
• Automate operational tasks using scripting and CI/CD tooling.
• Support PQC migration from an operations perspective (algorithm rollout, validation).
• Provide development support in an operational capacity; reproduce issues for engineering.
• Communicate across stakeholders; document runbooks and escalate risks before impact.

Skills

RHEL Linux administration

PKI operations

Scripting (Python/Bash)

Security clearance

Containerization (Podman/Docker)

RHCS / Dogtag PKI

VMs (KVM)

HSM operations

Tools

RHCS

Entrust nShield

Thales Luna

Podman

Docker

KVM

Python

Job description

Ft. Meade, MD — Full Time (Hybrid)
August Schell is looking for a PKI Operations Engineer to sustain and operate DoD 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 works hand-in-hand with commercial product engineering, government operations teams, and other program contractors — including through the environment's post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration.

Ft. Meade, MD — Full Time (Hybrid)
August Schell is looking for a PKI Operations Engineer to sustain and operate DoD 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 works hand-in-hand with 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 and maintain alerting, logging, and dashboards; respond to and resolve operational incidents, and lead root-cause analysis
• Operate and troubleshoot HSM integrations (Entrust nShield / Thales Luna) supporting CA operations and key escrow
• Automate operational tasks — health checks, backups, certificate/CRL monitoring, deployment and 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 as additional value — 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 escalate risks and blockers before they impact operations

Requirements

• Active Secret clearance minimum (Top Secret preferred and may be required)
• 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 experience operating Red Hat Certificate System (RHCS) — this is a Red Hat solution. Dogtag PKI 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, ISC CertAgent, or similar)
• Scripting/automation proficiency (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 (Entrust nShield, 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)