Senior Staff Systems Administrator

Auria; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

BCubed Engineering, an Auria company, seeks a Senior Staff Systems Administrator to bridge software, hardware, security, and operations across development, test, and deployment. You will lead complex infrastructure projects, drive automation, and mentor teammates in a high‑stakes enterprise setting.

The role emphasizes hands‑on hardware lifecycle management, configuration baselining, and secure DevSecOps practices.

Qualifications

• An Information Technology/Information Systems degree or equivalent experience.
• Active SECRET security clearance required.
• Experience maintaining DevSecOps infrastructure and automation tooling.

Responsibilities

• Automate infrastructure deployment and CI/CD pipelines across subsystems.
• Maintain DevSecOps platforms: GitLab, Artifactory, and Harbor.
• Perform hardware configuration, troubleshooting, and root cause analysis across development, test, and production environments.
• Mentor and lead engineering teams, promoting best practices in cloud security and automation.
• Communicate complex architectures and findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Skills

Security clearance

Automation scripting

Systems administration

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in IT or related field

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

Ansible

GitLab

JFrog Artifactory

Harbor

Job description

Position:Senior Staff Systems Administrator

Location: Warrenton, VA

Remote Status: Hybrid

Job Id:13892-Navy TO5 Option 1

# of Openings:2

BCubed Engineering, an Auria company, is looking to hire a Senior Staff Systems Administrator to join the team. You will be responsible for delivering high-quality products that meet the requirements, constraints, and goals of our customers by bridging software development, hardware configuration, security, and operations. You will apply advanced technical rigor to complex system architectures, managing tasks across the entire development cycle—including design, modeling, implementation, testing, integration, and deployment. At the Staff level, you are expected to make a moderate-to-high organizational impact, managing complex systems tasks while serving as a respected mentor and advanced individual contributor.

For this role, we are seeking a qualified candidate to support the lifecycle management of our hardware platforms. This role is responsible for configuring development, test and deployment system HW devices, investigating failures, driving root cause analysis, evaluating and dispositioning returned hardware, maintaining engineering documentation, maintenance of development system HW baseline and operations, and enhancing configuration and troubleshooting processes and tools via automation. The ideal candidate is hands‑on, detail-oriented, and comfortable working across engineering, manufacturing, suppliers, and operations. This will be an onsite role located in Warrenton, VA

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT TO DO:

• Systems Administration Excellence: Apply advanced problem-solving skills and methodologies to complex infrastructure and deployment problem sets, driving automated pipeline innovation across entire subsystems and environments.
• Technical Rigor & Automation: Maintain a strict commitment to testing, repeatable manual and automated processes, comprehensive configuration documentation, and reliable delivery. Ensure infrastructure security policies and compliance gates align with the mission needs of our customers.
• End-User & Developer Focus: Design solutions that explicitly reflect the mission needs of the end‑user, embracing a growth mindset by seeking feedback to build trusted partnerships.
• Team Leadership & Mentorship: Act as a Contributing Team Member by managing your own workload, helping plan the engineering team's continuous deployment commitments, and holding to schedules. Serve as a trusted resource for mentorship and coaching, establishing tradecraft leadership in cloud security and automation across the broader organization.
• Communication: Clearly communicate complex system architectures, strategies, and findings to both technical peers and non-technical audiences. Confidently communicate directly with external partners and customers.
• Innovation: Pursue innovative solutions and automation tools in all aspects of your work. Take advantage of internal IR&D budgets by compiling a standard quad-chart to pitch novel automation concepts directly to the President.
• Configuration Management: Maintain development system HW baseline configuration and operations. Implement configuration changes to support verification requirements.
• Create and update hardware and other procedures, specifications, and work instructions.
• Create and maintain hardware CAD models, drawings, bills of materials (BOMs), and engineering documentation.
• HW Discrepancy Resolution: Evaluate, disposition, and document returned or suspect hardware.
• Perform hardware troubleshooting and root cause analysis on failed systems, assemblies, and components. Interface with hardware vendors and suppliers to resolve technical issues, qualify components, and support product changes.
• Trend and analyze hardware failures to identify recurring issues and drive corrective actions. Support engineering change orders (ECOs) and configuration management activities.
• HW Inventory and Lifecycle Planning: Support inventory reviews and recommend repair, reuse, or replacement strategies for hardware assets. Collaborate with design, manufacturing, quality, and test engineering teams to improve hardware reliability and maintainability.
• Conduct trade studies and technical evaluations of COTS server, networking, and communications equipment to support hardware recapitalization efforts and lifecycle management.
• Track reliability metrics and communicate trends and recommendations to engineering leadership.
• System Build: Execute Initialization and Software Verification Descriptor procedures on system HW devices. Develop and improve automation of configuration procedures.
• Execute Factory Acceptance Test procedures to verify system build.
• Maintain DevSecOps Infrastructure: Administer, configure, and maintain on‑premises GitLab, JFrog Artifactory, and Harbor platforms.
• Continuous Monitoring of DevSecOps infrastructure: Continuously monitor the health, availability, capacity, and performance of GitLab, Artifactory, and Harbor.
• Upgrade and patch management: Maintain platforms at vendor-supported versions and apply security patches in accordance with organizational requirements.
• Review vendor release notes, security advisories, known issues, and compatibility requirements before upgrades.
• Develop and execute upgrade procedures, including pre-upgrade validation, backups, testing, implementation, and post-upgrade verification.

WHAT THE TEAM REQUIRES:

• Mission-Driven Professional: Collaborative contributor motivated by the opportunity to develop cutting‑edge solutions that protect and serve both the nation and the world.
• A degree in Information Technology, Information Systems, or a closely related technical field from an accredited university, or equivalent knowledge acquired through apprenticeship, certifications, and professional work experience
• Hardware Platform Management: Server/compute platform deployment, maintenance, upgrades, firmware/BIOS management, hardware inventory, and lifecycle support.
• Hardware Configuration & Integration: Device setup, configuration, validation, peripheral integration, and compatibility assessment.
• Configuration Management: System baselining, configuration control, versioning, compliance with approved configurations, and maintaining configuration records.
• Systems Administration: Installation, configuration, maintenance, patching, troubleshooting, and operational support of enterprise computing environments.
• Automation & Orchestration: Ansible‑based infrastructure automation, configuration enforcement, automated provisioning, and repeatable operational workflows.
• Infrastructure as Code / Automated Configuration: Translating system requirements and manual procedures into automated, version‑controlled configurations.
• Troubleshooting & Root Cause Analysis: Diagnosing hardware failures, OS issues, configuration problems, connectivity issues, and integration defects.
• System Hardening & Standardization: Implementing standardized configurations, security baselines, patching processes, and configuration consistency.
• Operational Process Improvement: Assessing existing administration processes and enhancing them through scripting, automation, standardization, and tooling.
• Technical Documentation: Developing system documentation, configuration guides, SOPs, troubleshooting procedures, and automation documentation.
• Enterprise / Mission‑Critical Environments: Supporting environments where system availability, configuration consistency, traceability, and controlled change are critical.
• Active SECRET Clearance (US Citizenship Required)

WHAT THE TEAM PREFERS:

• Advanced Degree: Master’s degree in Information Technology, Information Systems, or a closely related technical field.
• Advanced Hardware Platform Engineering: Lifecycle management of complex compute platforms, firmware, BIOS/UEFI, BMC, storage, network adapters, accelerators, and specialized HW.
• Infrastructure Automation: Enterprise‑scale automation using Ansible and complementary scripting/programming technologies.
• Bare‑Metal & Automated Provisioning: PXE/network boot, automated OS deployment, hardware discovery, provisioning, configuration, and post‑deployment validation.
• Hardware/Software Integration: Troubleshooting issues at the HW/firmware/OS/application boundary and managing dependencies across the technology stack.
• Data Center / Enterprise Infrastructure: Administration of geographically distributed or high‑availability compute, storage, and networking environments.
• DevOps / Infrastructure as Code: GitOps‑oriented practices, CI/CD integration, automated testing, version‑controlled infrastructure, and repeatable deployments.
• Systems Reliability & Observability: Automated monitoring, health assessment, telemetry, diagnostics, failure prediction, and self‑healing/remediation capabilities
• Security & Compliance Automation: Automated hardening, patch management, vulnerability remediation, configuration compliance, and auditability.
• Infrastructure Modernization: Migration from manual, legacy administration processes toward standardized, API‑driven, automated infrastructure management.
• Technical Architecture: Ability to evaluate infrastructure requirements and contribute to the design of scalable, resilient, maintainable, and highly automated systems administration architectures.
• Enterprise Architecture: Experience developing and maintaining DoDAF‑compliant architecture frameworks and high‑level operational concepts (e.g., OV‑1 graphics).
• Field Deployment: Hands‑on experience successfully deploying, installing, and transitioning complex systems directly to fielded, operational sites.
• Travel: Ability to travel for remote site installation, verification, troubleshooting and/or operator training. Anticipated travel frequency is up to several trips per year, with majority trip durations being 1 to 2 weeks and the minority, 3 to 4 weeks.

PAY TRANSPARENCY:

The salary offered will be based on the selected candidate's qualifications - skills, education & experience - and the position level. $100,000- $130,000.

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

November 30, 2026.

THE BCUBED ENGINEERING TEAM:

BCubed Engineering, an Auria company, is an