Chief Engineer / Architect
About The Position
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), protects the American people, safeguards U.S. borders, and enhances the nation's economic prosperity through innovation, intelligence, and collaboration. Within CBP's Office of Information and Technology (OIT), the Border Enforcement Management Systems Directorate (BEMSD) manages a large, diverse portfolio of mission applications—sustaining legacy systems at high availability while modernizing and developing new solutions. The Systems & Applications Integration & Lifecycle Support (SAILS) program will provide BEMSD with full-lifecycle IT services—from new application development and 24x7x365 operations to legacy modernization—delivered through Agile and DevSecOps practices. GDIT is seeking a Chief Engineer/Architect to support the SAILS program. In this role, you will serve as the senior technical authority for the program, leading the program's technical architecture, modernization roadmap, and technical approach for DevSecOps within CBP's established CI/CD environment. You will partner with program leadership and BEMSD stakeholders to translate mission needs into secure, scalable, integrated solutions while shaping the program's long-term technical strategy.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline.
- 15+ years leading enterprise architecture for large-scale federal IT programs.
- Experience leading modernization across complex application portfolios.
- Expertise in legacy modernization, cloud and hybrid architectures.
- Experience with Agile, DevSecOps, CI/CD, and modern software delivery practices.
- Strong executive communication, stakeholder engagement, and leadership skills.
- U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain a CBP Background Investigation.
Nice To Haves
- Master's degree in a technical or management discipline.
- Prior DHS, preferably CBP OIT, program experience.
- Experience with Salesforce, ServiceNow, or enterprise BI platforms.
- Experience delivering AI/ML and automation capabilities in federal environments.
- Experience integrating operational data from sensor, edge, or field systems.
- Relevant cloud architecture certifications (e.g., AWS or Azure).
Responsibilities
- Lead enterprise architecture and modernization across BEMSD's application portfolio, enabling secure, scalable mission capabilities.
- Guide technical design decisions and ensure architecture standards remain aligned with CBP and DHS requirements.
- Oversee development and maintenance of architecture artifacts, including system interfaces, integration patterns, reference architectures, and technology roadmaps.
- Champion innovation across application development, modernization, and operations to improve mission agility and performance.
- Provide technical leadership to engineering teams across application, cloud, data, and integration domains.
- Partner with BEMSD stakeholders and development teams to translate mission needs into secure, compliant solutions.
- Evaluate and integrate AI, automation, and emerging technologies—including sensor, edge, and field data integration—to enhance mission capabilities.
- Brief BEMSD and GDIT leadership on architectural strategy, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations.
Benefits
- Variety of medical plan options, some with Health Savings Accounts
- Dental plan options
- Vision plan
- 401(k) plan offering the ability to contribute both pre and post-tax dollars up to the IRS annual limits and receive a company match
- Full flex work weeks where possible
- Variety of paid time off plans, including vacation, sick and personal time, holidays
- Paid parental, military, bereavement and jury duty leave
- 15 days of paid leave per calendar year to be used for vacations, personal business, and illness
- 10 paid holidays per year
- Paid leave and paid holidays are prorated based on the employee’s date of hire
- Paid Family Leave program provides a total of up to 160 hours of paid leave in a rolling 12 month period for eligible employees
- Short and long-term disability benefits
- Life, accidental death and dismemberment, personal accident, critical illness and business travel and accident insurance
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
