Senior Systems Engineer: Cloud & Platform Architecture Lead

VTG Defense; Tysons (VA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

VTG Defense is seeking a hands-on Systems Engineer (SME) with deep expertise across infrastructure, platforms, and application ecosystems spanning cloud and on‑premises environments. You will analyze current systems, document architectures, design future-state solutions, and lead end-to-end enhancements and transformations.

The ideal candidate owns complex systems from design through production, collaborates with cross-functional teams, and delivers clear technical documentation, diagrams, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in a technical discipline with deep systems engineering experience.
• Minimum ten years of related systems engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience across cloud and on-prem infrastructure.
• Strong background in architecture documentation and design.
• Experience with IAM, PKI, and security hardening best practices.
• Proven ability to translate complex architectures into actionable plans.

Responsibilities

• Perform hands-on systems engineering across network, compute, storage, OS, middleware, databases, and applications.
• Analyze and document as-is infrastructure, platform, and application architectures.
• Create detailed engineering designs for modernization and transformations.
• Lead cloud and on-prem system implementations, migrations, and upgrades.
• Ensure availability, scalability, security, and compliance requirements.
• Produce clear technical documentation, diagrams, and runbooks.

Skills

Enterprise networking

Storage technologies

Container platforms

Linux administration

PKI IAM

Hybrid/on-prem design

Relational/NoSQL databases

Web services & APIs

SDLC fundamentals

Event-based messaging

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD pipelines

Security hardening

Monitoring & incident response

As-is / To-be architecture

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related

10+ years systems engineering experience

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

PowerShell

Python

Terraform

Ansible

CloudFormation

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

CI/CD tools

Job description

VTG Defense is seeking a hands-on Systems Engineer (SME) with deep expertise across infrastructure, platforms, and application ecosystems spanning cloud and on‑premises environments. You will analyze current systems, document architectures, design future-state solutions, and lead end-to-end enhancements and transformations.

The ideal candidate owns complex systems from design through production, collaborates with cross-functional teams, and delivers clear technical documentation, diagrams, and