Principal Systems Engineer #208

The Senate Sergeant at Arms is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer. The complete vacancy announcement and application can be found on the United States Senate Career Page at . This vacancy announcement closes at 7pm EST on the closing date. Late applications will not be accepted.

Duties

Contributes to the section's work effort in responding to incidents from other sections, including the help desk. Supports tasks which may include helping to develop standard operating procedures, assignments, and coordination of work efforts to address issues. Assists users with computer needs such as installing and configuring software/hardware on their PC; troubleshoots problems with user systems. Provisions new accounts for users. Supports the section's work effort to develop processes and procedures to streamline the resolution of issues. Provides technical support for Senate information technology or telecommunications services, systems, hardware, software, and storage solutions to the users; supports Senate offices, contract support vendors, and other technical staff in troubleshooting and managing the various Senate environments. Maintains and monitors LAN/WAN and SAN operations and solves LAN/WAN and SAN applications problems; installs integrates, customizes, enhances, troubleshoots, and tests LAN and SAN hardware and software. Assists in installing, upgrading, customizing, tuning, and maintaining databases for optimal performance and availability; assists in developing, testing, and implementing database store procedures, functions, triggers, views, and packages. Conducts acceptance and integration testing; assists vendor systems implementation by troubleshooting related system issues affecting Senate users. Analyzes, designs, develops, implements, and maintains applications to meet the needs of Senate users; assists with product evaluations and implementation. Attends internal training provided by subject matter experts to understand operational tasks, documents support needs, and share the information within the assigned section. Other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• For conditions of employment and citizenship requirements, please visit the job announcement on the United States Senate Career Page at .

Qualifications

Other Duties/ Responsibilities

• Participate in on-site and on-call rotation.

Required Work Experience

• Eight to ten years of relevant work experience (GED), six to eight years (Associates), four to eight years (Bachelor’s), two to four years (Master’s).

Required Special Skills/ Knowledge

• Provides long-range strategic planning activities for the Senate in the areas of information technology or telecommunications hardware, software, storage solutions, and networking systems; monitors the impact of technological developments; identifies emerging technologies.
• Provides expert-level technical support on Senate hardware, software, storage solutions, and network systems to vendors, other technical staff, and other divisions and departments; resolves critical and complex systems, applications, storage or communications performance problems.
• Serves as project manager on assigned projects; plans, assigns, directs and coordinates work efforts; develops project plans, timetables and staff assignments.
• Customizes, tests, recommends and configures operating and network systems and software platforms; monitors, evaluates and resolves hardware/software configuration system performance problems; recommends third party software on other operating systems.

As part of our hiring process, we may conduct a skills assessment to better understand an applicant’s proficiency in key areas relevant to the role.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with Splunk in distributed deployments.
• Experience with Splunk Enterprise Security or integration with other Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms.
• Proficient at data onboarding activities, including routing, parsing, and normalizing events to the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM).
• Proficiency in onboarding data using Splunk-developed add-ons for Windows, Linux, and common third-party devices and applications.
• Proficiency in onboarding data into Splunk via forwarder, scripted inputs, TCP/UDP, and modular inputs from various sources.
• Proficiency in managing Splunk using the Splunk command-line interface.
• Proficiency in managing Splunk using configuration files.
• Experience collaborating with separate engineering teams to configure data sources for Splunk integration.
• Proficiency in implementing and onboarding data in Splunk DB Connect.
• Experience with Splunk performing systems administration, including performing installation, configuration, monitoring system performance and availability, upgrades, and troubleshooting.
• General networking and security troubleshooting (firewalls, routing, NAT, etc.).
• Splunk implementation and troubleshooting experience.
• Experience managing, maintaining, and administering multi-site indexer clusters and search head clustering.
• Proficiency in developing log ingestion and aggregation strategies per Splunk best practices.
• Experience with performing integration activities to configure, connect, and pull data with 3rd party software APIs.
• Scripting and development skills (Ansible, Bash, Python, and PowerShell).

Desired Certifications

• Splunk Administrator.
• Splunk Certified Architect.
• Certified Storage Associate.
• Red Hat Certified Systems Administrator or greater (RHCE).
• At least one of the following certifications: CISSP, CCSP, CSSLP, CCNP, CCNP Security, CCIE Security, CEH, ECSP, MCSE, RHCA, RHCSA, RHCE, VCP, VCAP, VCIX, and VCDX.

Working Conditions

• No exceptional physical demands.

Security Clearance

• This position requires that the applicant obtain and maintain a Secret U.S. Government security clearance.
• Applicants must be U.S. citizens in order for the SAA to submit your application for a security clearance.