Responsibilities

Peraton is seeking a Senior Cyber Systems Architect to join our Department of State (DoS) Diplomatic Security Cyber Mission (DSCM) program, providing leading cyber and technology security expertise to enable innovative, effective, and secure business processes.

 

Location: Arlington, VA

 

In this role, you will support or lead:

• Strategic Planning & Architecture
  • Provide long-term strategy recommendations for cybersecurity and AI projects and initiatives by observing industry trends, conducting research, and overseeing and evaluating pilot projects.
  • Architect and design cloud-based AI solutions, including agentic AI systems and open-weight model deployments, to meet mission requirements.
  • Evaluate and recommend AI service offerings (cloud-based, agentic, and open-weight models) based on security, scalability, and mission fit.
  • Support the completion of an inventory of applications, services, software, servers, and networks used by the Directorate.
  • Design new systems, applications, and solutions for enterprise-wide cyber systems and networks.
  • Research, evaluate, and recommend new architectural features into new and existing infrastructures
  • Design cybersecurity architectural artifacts, provide architectural analysis of cybersecurity features
  • Provide analytical support for security policy development and analysis.
  • Review existing systems and networks to forecast future needs and trends.
• Security Engineering and Risk Management
  • Lead the selection and execution of cutting-edge technology prototypes that advance the mission
  • Ensure system security needs are established and maintained for operations development, security requirements definition, security risk assessment, systems analysis, systems design, security test and evaluation, certification and accreditation, systems hardening, vulnerability testing and scanning, incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning.
  • Provides engineering recommendations and resolve integration and testing issues.
  • Oversee the System Security Engineer and System Security Officer to ensure timely development of risk management body of evidence artifacts in support of the Risk Management Framework, implementation of controls, assessment preparedness and proactive elimination of vulnerabilities that might impede final authorization.
• Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Coordination
  • Support the implementation of an outcome-based roadmap by identifying and contributing relevant metrics for teams involved in strategy and execution.
  • Plan and assign software development taskings to ensure timely development of all required software components for the acceptance, parsing, and validation of all requirement document types.
  • Ensure full automation of system builds and deployment across domains through appropriate DevSecOps processes making use of US government provided tools and commercially available resources.
  • Work alongside multiple project teams to ensure consistent and uniform security implementation across both on-premises and cloud infrastructure.

Qualifications

Minimum Requirements: 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, or other related scientific or technical discipline and a minimum 14 years hands-on experience designing secure systems.
• Possess and maintain one of the following certifications: CISSP Certification, Security+, Network+, A+, MCP, MCSE, CCNA, or MCSA
• Expertise in/strong understanding of cloud computing concepts and fundamentals (serverless, scalability, high availability, and durability).
• Strong familiarity with AuthZ, AuthN, and Public Key Infrastructure techniques and concepts.
• Experience utilizing modeling languages (UML) and/or modeling software (Visio, Enterprise Architect, etc.) to diagram enterprise system architecture, data flows, and networking-level system components.
• Strong understanding of VoIP systems. This includes telephone switching systems, VTC systems and other voice telecommunication systems for both non-secure and secure communications.
• Knowledge of security regulations, strategies and policy.
• Experience with TEMPEST regulations and countermeasure strategies.
• U.S. citizenship required.
• The ability to obtain an interim Secret clearance before start date.
  • The ability to obtain a final Top-Secret/SCI security clearance.

Preferred: 

• Master’s degree and experience architecting and implementing advanced network solutions - CIDR and sub-netting (IPv4 and IPv6), VPNs, etc..
• AWS Certified Security Specialty or AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional.
• Experience with DevSecOps and modern Low-Code/No-Code environments.

Target Salary Range$176,000 - $282,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position. Salary is determined by various factors, including but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the individual’s experience, education, knowledge, skills, and competencies, as well as geographic location and business and contract considerations. Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay.