Principal Systems Architect

TISTA Science and Technology Corporation•San Diego, CA

About The Position

TISTA is seeking a Principal Systems Architect to serve as a hands-on technical leader and trusted advisor to VA Infrastructure Operations leadership. The role connects data center and cloud infrastructure, automation, application platforms, identity services, and business requirements into secure, scalable, reliable, and supportable solutions. The architect must be able to engage senior executives as well as participate in design reviews, automation walkthroughs, and production troubleshooting. The position combines systems thinking, practical engineering, executive communication, and disciplined problem solving while supporting developers, operators, business customers, and accountable providers. The role provides executive technical advice on infrastructure strategy, modernization, risk, and service performance; develops and reviews end-to-end architectures; and builds or reviews automation and engineering solutions. It partners with application and business teams, troubleshoots cross-layer issues, applies performance and SRE practices, and integrates network, database, storage, ICAM, data center, and hybrid-cloud considerations. Assigned solutions are carried through discovery, prototyping, testing, deployment, and sustainment, with documentation and operational handover. The position contributes to engineering and architecture governance, reusable patterns, and the Automation and Engineering Center of Excellence. It mentors engineers and coordinates with relevant teams and providers. It advises Government leaders and leads assigned contractor architecture and engineering, but does not exercise Government funding, contracting, policy, risk-acceptance, authorization, or acceptance authority. The work arrangement involves customer engagement and site visits as required; the final onsite or hybrid schedule and travel expectations are to be confirmed. San Diego, California, is the preferred work location.

Requirements

15+ years of progressively responsible systems or infrastructure engineering experience, including 5+ years as a systems architect, solution architect, principal engineer, or technical lead; the periods may overlap.
Demonstrated participation in implementation and production support, not solely consulting recommendations or project administration.
Recent practical experience designing, implementing, automating, and troubleshooting hybrid infrastructure.
Ability to develop or critically review scripts, configuration, infrastructure-as-code, APIs, and deployment pipelines, explain technical decisions, and work directly with engineering teams.
Substantial experience with enterprise data center infrastructure and at least one major cloud platform.
Working knowledge of compute, operating systems, virtualization, container platforms, networking, storage, database services, backup, and disaster recovery, including cross-stack interactions and tradeoffs.
Practical experience investigating performance or availability problems and improving scalability, observability, capacity, and recoverability; ability to distinguish symptoms from root causes and assess service-wide impact.
Experience supporting application hosting and development teams, understanding application dependencies, and integrating security and identity requirements.
Working knowledge of ICAM concepts, including authentication versus authorization, federation, privileged access, and human and nonhuman identities; ability to coordinate specialized implementations with accountable owners.
Demonstrated experience advising C-level or equivalent senior Government leaders.
Strong executive presentation, technical writing, workshop facilitation, and interpersonal skills; ability to explain complex issues accurately, present defensible options, respond to challenging questions, and influence across organizational boundaries.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information technology, information systems, or a related discipline, or an allowable equivalent combination of education and experience.
Ability to meet applicable Government suitability, training, and access requirements and participate in required customer and site engagements.
Must be able to obtain a Tier 2 / Moderate Risk Public Trust and a VA PIV credential.

Nice To Haves

San Diego-area residence or willingness to relocate; San Diego is preferred, not a mandatory exclusion.
Direct advisory experience with VA SES/OIT leadership.
Federal or regulated-enterprise delivery experience.
Multi-provider service integration experience.
Service catalog and ITSM/CMDB integration experience.
FinOps-informed architecture experience.
Experience establishing reusable automation or platform engineering practices.
Relevant cloud architecture, systems engineering, SRE, networking, security, or automation credentials.

Responsibilities

Advise SES, C-level, and technology leaders on infrastructure strategy, modernization options, technical risk, and service performance; prepare decision briefs, architecture narratives, and presentations, and translate decisions into engineering work.
Develop and review current-state and target-state architectures spanning data centers, cloud, compute, network, storage, operating systems, virtualization, containers, applications, and identity.
Define architecture interfaces, trust boundaries, capacity assumptions, failure modes, and operational responsibilities, and convert approved designs into implementation packages.
Develop, prototype, and review infrastructure-as-code, scripts, APIs, and orchestration workflows using approved tools.
Build reusable automation paths with validation, testing, secure credentials, retries, rollback, tagging, monitoring, and configuration-record updates; explain and troubleshoot the automation.
Partner with development and business teams to translate customer needs into technical and nonfunctional requirements and acceptance criteria.
Coordinate application platform, runtime, interface, middleware, release-readiness, and support dependencies with application hosting and application services teams.
Investigate cross-layer failures and bottlenecks using logs, metrics, traces, configuration, workload behavior, and controlled tests; coordinate specialists, validate root causes, and develop durable corrective actions.
Evaluate latency, throughput, concurrency, resource saturation, load balancing, caching, and scaling; apply SRE practices for service indicators and objectives, observability, capacity planning, operational efficiency, and recovery validation.
Integrate DNS, routing, connectivity, firewalls, certificates, storage performance, data access, replication, backup, recovery, and database/application dependencies into infrastructure designs.
Work with ICAM and security specialists on authentication, authorization, federation, privileged access, certificates, service identities, least privilege, identity integration, migration impacts, support procedures, and security boundaries.
Participate in site assessments and review data center rack, power, cooling, cabling, connectivity, capacity, and configuration dependencies with relevant specialists.
Compare cloud and on-premises placement based on service requirements, resilience, lifecycle, operating constraints, and economics.
Carry assigned solutions from discovery and prototyping through integration, testing, authorized deployment, and sustainment; establish performance and recovery tests, runbooks, rollback plans, support ownership, and evidence.
Maintain current architecture, configuration, service relationship, and technical-debt records after deployment.
Contribute to engineering, architecture, strategy, governance, design reviews, reusable patterns, and the Automation and Engineering Center of Excellence.
Mentor engineers and coordinate with SDI, FinOps, the Business Office, security teams, and providers; evaluate cost, risk, effort, and operational value while preserving assigned scope and Government decision authority.

Benefits

Above-industry healthcare benefits
Remote working options
Paid time off
Training and certification opportunities
Healthcare Savings Account
Flexible Savings Account
Paid life insurance
Short-term and long-term disability
401(k) match
Tuition reimbursement
Employee Assistance Program
Paid holidays
Military leave
Additional forms of compensation, such as bonuses, may be available for certain positions.