Senior Systems Administrator
Location: Gaithersburg, MD
Required Clearance: Active TS/SCI with Polygraph Eligibility
Employment Type: Full-Time Regular
Shift: Day
Travel: No
Relocation Assistance: Yes
Position Overview
Ennoble First is seeking a Senior Systems Administrator to support the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. In this role, you will administer, secure, and optimize enterprise Windows and Linux environments supporting development, test, integration, and production systems.
Working alongside systems engineers, DevSecOps practitioners, software developers, and cybersecurity professionals, you will help maintain highly available and resilient infrastructure, automate system administration activities, strengthen cybersecurity, and enable rapid delivery of mission-critical capabilities within a fast-paced Agile environment.
Primary Responsibilities
- Administer and maintain Windows and Linux server environments.
- Install, configure, patch, and upgrade operating systems and enterprise applications.
- Monitor system health, performance, capacity, and availability.
- Support Agile development teams by provisioning and maintaining development, test, staging, and production environments.
- Implement infrastructure changes through established configuration management and change control processes.
- Troubleshoot hardware, software, networking, and storage issues to minimize downtime.
- Collaborate with DevSecOps engineers to automate system administration tasks using scripting and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools.
- Maintain compliance with Intelligence Community cybersecurity requirements, Risk Management Framework controls, DISA STIGs, and security policies.
- Perform vulnerability remediation, security patching, and system hardening.
- Support virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere or Nutanix.
- Manage Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, PKI, and identity management services.
- Develop and maintain system documentation, standard operating procedures, and architecture diagrams.
- Participate in Agile ceremonies, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, daily stand-ups, and retrospectives.
- Provide Tier III operational support and participate in after-hours maintenance windows as required.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field and 8-12 years of prior relevant experience, or Master's degree with 6-10 years of prior relevant experience.
- 8+ years of systems administration experience supporting enterprise environments.
- Experience supporting Intelligence Community or Department of Defense customers.
- Strong experience administering:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
- Experience with scripting using PowerShell, Bash, or Python.
- CompTIA Security+ certification.
- Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) certification.
- ITIL 4 Foundation certification.
- Knowledge of storage technologies, backup solutions, and disaster recovery.
- Experience applying DISA STIGs and RMF security controls.
- Familiarity with configuration management and automation tools such as Ansible, Puppet, or Chef.
- Experience using Git and supporting CI/CD pipelines.
- Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and communication skills.
- Active TS/SCI clearance with the ability to successfully complete a polygraph examination.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting cloud technologies such as AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, or C2S.
- Experience with Kubernetes and container platforms.
- Familiarity with Docker and OpenShift.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible.
- Knowledge of Elastic Stack, Splunk, Grafana, or Prometheus.
- Experience supporting DevSecOps environments.
- Understanding of Zero Trust architecture principles.
- Experience with SAN/NAS administration.
Desired Competencies
- Strong customer service orientation.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to prioritize multiple tasks in a dynamic Agile environment.
- Self-motivated with strong attention to detail.
- Collaborative mindset with the ability to work across technical teams.
- Commitment to continuous process improvement and automation.
Pay Range
$125,000-$155,000
The Ennoble First pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.