Lead Systems Engineer
About The Position
Unissant, Inc. is seeking a Lead Systems Engineer to support a large federal enterprise IT services program. The role leads enterprise-level systems engineering, capability planning, and modernization roadmap development in collaboration with government stakeholders, program leadership, engineers, technical leads, and mission partners. The engineer will define the future-state enterprise environment and develop a phased, executable modernization strategy and roadmap. The position translates mission needs, operational priorities, stakeholder requirements, and technology opportunities into an integrated plan. It sequences capabilities across planning epochs, establishes dependencies and milestones, and informs investment and implementation decisions. The role connects strategic modernization objectives with actionable engineering plans while balancing mission priorities, technical dependencies, operational continuity, and resource constraints. This is a technical leadership role requiring enterprise-wide collaboration, facilitation of complex stakeholder decisions, and production of engineering artifacts and roadmaps to guide long-term modernization. The position is hybrid, with on-site work in Ashburn, Virginia, four days per week during the first year and as mission needs require. Candidates must live in the greater Washington, DC area or be able to commute to Ashburn. The work is mainly in a routine office environment; lifting up to ten pounds and extended hours may be required. Candidates must complete pre-employment screening.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of relevant professional experience, including substantial experience in systems engineering, enterprise IT, systems integration, architecture, or technology modernization.
- Experience supporting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or National Targeting Center (NTC), or U.S. Border Patrol mission environments.
- Experience supporting large-scale federal enterprise IT services, systems modernization, or systems integration programs.
- Experience with integrated schedule planning, dependency analysis, milestone management, risk identification, and cross-team coordination.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to assess complex technical dependencies and develop practical, defensible recommendations.
- Ability to collaborate with government customers, program management, enterprise architects, and multidisciplinary engineering teams.
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline.
- Active CBP clearance or DoD Top Secret (TS) clearance.
- Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and presentation skills, including communicating technical issues and trade-offs to technical and executive audiences.
- Ability to present proposals and performance data and interface comfortably at all organizational levels.
- Ability to write clear and concise creative content in a highly confidential manner.
- Must be within the greater Washington, DC area or commutable to Ashburn, Virginia.
- Must complete pre-employment screening.
Nice To Haves
- Experience developing multi-year modernization roadmaps organized into planning horizons or epochs.
- Understanding of federal enterprise IT technologies and modernization considerations, including cloud platforms, application modernization, data integration, cybersecurity, identity management, and infrastructure transformation.
- Familiarity with agile delivery, DevSecOps, enterprise portfolio planning, and program management processes.
- Relevant systems engineering, enterprise architecture, or program management certifications.
- Active CBP clearance or active DoD TS or TS/SCI clearance.
Responsibilities
- Lead development and maintenance of the systems modernization roadmap, defining target and intermediate states, transition strategies, and sequencing of initiatives.
- Develop capability-based plans across multiple planning epochs, including required capabilities, dependencies, prerequisites, and anticipated outcomes.
- Assess the current enterprise environment, identify capability gaps and technical limitations, and recommend mission-aligned modernization priorities.
- Translate strategic objectives into engineering plans with implementation phases, decision points, milestones, dependencies, and transition timelines.
- Evaluate modernization alternatives, legacy constraints, technology opportunities, and integration considerations to inform recommendations and investment decisions.
- Identify and manage cross-system dependencies, sequencing constraints, critical-path activities, risks, and schedule impacts.
- Coordinate with program management, technical leads, architects, and delivery teams to validate estimates, assumptions, resource needs, and feasibility.
- Engage government mission owners, operational users, program leadership, and technical stakeholders to elicit, analyze, validate, and prioritize enterprise requirements.
- Translate mission objectives and operational needs into measurable capability, functional, and system requirements, as well as technical constraints.
- Analyze conflicting requirements, gaps, and ambiguities, and recommend balances among mission value, feasibility, cost, schedule, and risk.
- Apply systems engineering across the enterprise lifecycle, from mission analysis and requirements development through architecture, integration planning, deployment, and sustainment.
- Analyze system-of-systems dependencies and assess proposed changes across applications, infrastructure, data, cloud services, networks, cybersecurity, and shared enterprise capabilities.
- Support technical trade studies, feasibility assessments, gap analyses, risk assessments, and alternatives analyses.
- Identify emerging technical and operational risks and develop mitigation strategies, escalation paths, and decision options.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
