Location: Chantilly, VA (Government/Contractor SCIF) 100%
Clearance: TS/SCI
Job Duties:
We are seeking a highly capable Senior Operations Lead / Infrastructure Engineer to oversee, sustain, and lead a tight-knit technical operations team (3–5 people) managing a mission-critical, self-hosted ServiceNow ecosystem. This platform spans secure AWS cloud enclaves across both High and Low side networks in Northern Virginia. This role is ideal for a seasoned technical leader who combines deep systems administration expertise with the leadership skills required to drive operational excellence, mentor engineering staff, and maintain platform availability in highly regulated Intelligence Community environments.
As the Operations Lead, you will take end-to-end ownership of a complex, multi-network ServiceNow ecosystem spanning AWS, Windows, and Linux/CentOS platforms. You will be responsible for ensuring operational excellence—leading deployment, sustainment, incident response, and configuration baseline synchronization across discrete networks.
The ideal candidate champions an Out-of-the-Box (OOB) architectural philosophy to minimize technical debt, prioritizing native platform features to ensure smooth upgrade paths while keeping system performance closely aligned with mission objectives.
What we’re looking for:
- A self-directed operations leader who takes ownership of systems, team direction, and outcomes end-to-end.
- Proven ability to direct, mentor, and organize daily tasks for a small team of specialized engineers.
- Deep expertise in systems administration across AWS, Windows, and Linux environments.
- Strong experience supporting and administering ServiceNow platforms in self-hosted, on-premise environments.
- An operational philosophy that prioritizes platform stability, minimal technical debt, and native ServiceNow capabilities over custom code.
- Proven ability to operate in structured, regulated, or air-gapped classified environments.
- Experience with STIG implementation, RMF compliance, and secure cloud practices.
- A problem solver who thrives in complex, high-availability operational settings.
- A collaborator who can communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities include:
- Team Leadership: Provide day-to-day technical direction, task prioritization, sprint planning, and mentorship to a 3–5 person operations team.
- Platform Stewardship: Enforce platform best practices, prioritizing native configurations and OOB features to ensure seamless upgrade paths and long-term system stability.
- Cross-Network Synchronization: Manage the secure transport, verification, and deployment of update sets, applications, and configurations between discrete High and Low side environments.
- Lead daily operations and sustainment of a secure, self-hosted ServiceNow platform in AWS cloud environments.
- Own system reliability, availability, and performance across multi-network architectures.
- Administer and maintain Windows and Linux/CentOS systems supporting ServiceNow infrastructure.
- Plan and execute platform deployments, upgrades, patching, and configuration management.
- Implement and enforce security best practices, including STIG compliance and RMF controls.
- Monitor system health, troubleshoot complex issues, and drive rapid incident resolution.
- Automate operational processes to improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability.
- Coordinate across engineering, security, and mission stakeholders to support operational requirements.
- Maintain compliance with DoD and Intelligence Community standards in classified environments.
Must meet degree and years of experience criteria below:
| High School Diploma/ GED | 12 |
| Associates Degree | 10 |
| Bachelors Degree | 8 |
| Masters Degree | 6 |
| PhD | 4 |
Required Certifications:
- DoD 8570 IAT II (e.g., Security+)
- ServiceNow Certified System Administrator (CSA)
- Linux or AIX Systems Administration I & II
Desired Certifications
- AWS/Cloud certification (e.g., AWS SysOps Administrator, Solutions Architect)
- ITIL 4 Foundation
- Additional ServiceNow certifications (Discovery, CMDB, ITOM, etc.)
Salary Range: $175+. The final offered salary will be based on several factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s depth of experience, skill set, qualifications, and internal pay equity. Hiring at the top end of the range would not be typical, to allow for future meaningful salary growth in this position
New River Systems is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, nation origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other factor protected by law.