System Engineer

Belay Technologies, Inc.; Annapolis (MD); On-site; USD 168,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

8 weeks paid leave

401(k) match 10%

$5,000 annual training

Student Loan Repayment Program

100% company-funded HSA

Rich medical coverage

Dental coverage

Life insurance

Amazon Prime, gym reimbursement, meals

Job summary

Belay Technologies, located in Columbia, MD, seeks a Lead System Engineer to guide a two-person sysadmin team within a 25+ software engineering organization. You will manage stability, security, and scalability of data transformation workflows and a web UI, spanning bare metal to AWS and Kubernetes.

The role emphasizes automation with Ansible, Terraform, Podman, and CI/CD in GitLab, plus mentoring others and achieving SSP accreditations.

Qualifications

• TS/SCI clearance with polygraph is required.
• 12 years of experience or 4 additional years in place of a BS.
• Ability to lead a small DevOps/SysAdmin team and mentor staff.
• Experience with Linux systems, automation, and cloud platforms.
• Strong understanding of security and SSP accreditation processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead two system administrators and collaborate with a 25+ software engineers.
• Maintain and secure production, development, and test environments.
• Oversee deployment automation and CI/CD in GitLab.
• Ensure observability, monitoring, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Maintain base Linux kickstart images (RHEL9).

Skills

Linux system administration

Leadership/mentoring

Education

BS in technical discipline or 4 additional yrs of experience

Tools

Kubernetes

Podman

Ansible

Terraform

Packer

Bash

Python

AWS

Kibana

Grafana

Prometheus

Elasticsearch

MongoDB

Redis

DGraph

Job description

Belay Technologies has been voted Baltimore Business Journal's (BBJ) Best Places to Work 2026!

Belay Technologies is seeking a System Engineer to join our intel team.Join a high-impact, mission-driven team as Lead Systems Engineer, where you will help manage the stability, security, and scalability of systems powering complex data transformation workflows and a widely used web-based user interface. Embedded within a broader engineering organization of 25+ developers, you will lead a small, agile DevOps/SysAdmin team responsible for end-to-end infrastructure, from bare-metal and AWS environments to Kubernetes deployments. In this role, you will collaborate across software teams to help architect robust systems, support development processes, maintain metrics and observability to track uptime and performance of systems, and mentor other team members in modern automation tools using Ansible, Terraform, and Podman, as well as testing and deployment strategies. This mature project is known for its technical stability, team cohesion, and deep integration into mission-critical systems, offering you the opportunity to make meaningful contributions in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and direct the daily tasks of two system administrators.
• Collaborate with and support the larger team of 25+ software engineers.
• Provide guidance, advice, and assistance for overall system design and setup, in conjunction with software engineering teams.
• Maintain system platforms and health of all servers (EC2, MASH, bare metal), production systems, development environments.
• Oversee system maintenance, security, and SSP accreditations.
• Observability of the system, e.g. automation, monitoring, alerting, backup, and disaster recovery strategies for all development, staging, and production environments.
• Maintain deployment automation process (e.g. CI/CD in GitLab).
• Ensure system documentation is up to date and conduct regular technical reviews and post-mortems to drive continuous improvement in team operations.
• Maintain base Linux kickstart images (RHEL9).

Candidates should have the following qualifications:

• TS/SCI Clearance with polygraph
• Requirement: 12 yrs., B.S. in a technical discipline or 4 additional yrs. in place of B.S.

Skill Requirement:

• Strong Linux system administration experience (e.g., RHEL9).
• Proficient in system automation and scripting tools such as Ansible (including Semaphore), Terraform, Packer, Bash, and Python.
• Knowledge of SSP compliance and processes, including STE/STN.
• Experience with containerization such as Podman and Kubernetes.
• Experience with containerization such as Podman and Kubernetes.
• Amazon AWS experience (setting up EC2 instances, S3 buckets, VPCs, IAM).
• Metrics and observability with Kibana, Grafana, and Prometheus.
• Familiarity with database administration with databases such as Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Redis, or graph databases (e.g. DGraph).

Nice to Haves:

• Nifi dataflow experience
• Elastic stack experience (logstash, filebeat, etc.)
• Graph database experience.
• Experience with other AWS tools such as EKS, ECS, Lambdas, and Secrets Manager. CI/CD in GitLab.
• CNO experience.
• Experience facilitating low-to-high development.
• Cisco networking experience.

Perks and Benefits:

• 8 weeks paid leave - 4 weeks of personal leave, 3 Yay! days, take off on your birthday,11 paid holidays and optional leave up to 6 days through Belay's volunteer program
• 10% matching in 401(k) contributions vested on day one
• $5,000 annual training/tuition
• Student Loan Repayment Program
• 100% company-funded HSA
• Rich medical coverage (100% coinsurance)
• Dental coverage including orthodontia
• Up to $420,000 in life insurance, premiums 100% company funded
• Amazon Prime, gym reimbursement, monthly lunches, games and prizes
• Pet adoption program, generous referral bonus program, fun events, and more!

At Belay, we are committed to creating an environment where you can thrive both professionally and personally. We believe in transparency and fairness in compensation. Several factors influence final salary including, but not limited to, geographic location, Federal Government contract labor categories and contract wage rates, relevant prior work experience, education, specific skills and competencies and certifications. Belay offers a competitive total compensation package that includes benefits and perks, a flexible work-life balance, and career development.

Salary Range: $168,000 to $240,000

Belay Technologies is a certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business located in Columbia, Maryland (Baltimore/Washington area). Belay Technologies specializes in systems automation and full stack development. Belay Technologies provides leading technology and engineering solutions to the DoD, as well as state‑of‑the‑art commercial products. We hire software engineers, web designers, test engineers, systems engineers, systems administrators, database engineers and other tech services. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, genetic factors, military/veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.