IT034 Principal Systems Engineer - Cloud Engineer

ADNET Systems•Greenbelt, MD

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

ADNET is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer - Cloud Engineer to join our dynamic team building next-generation cloud computing infrastructure for scientific research. The Cloud Systems Engineer will serve as a critical liaison between the Science Cloud Infrastructure Project (SCIP), the Core Data and Compute Services (CDCS) Program, and the sister projects within the CDCS. This role is responsible for transforming high-level mission objectives into detailed, verifiable technical requirements and translating those requirements into practical, reference cloud implementations for scientific computing systems and services within the SCIP environment. The position requires experience working at the intersection of traditional NASA systems engineering standards and agile/Scrum methodologies to ensure compliance while enabling iterative development. NASA's Science Cloud Infrastructure Project ( https://science.data.nasa.gov/science-cloud ) is a cloud computing platform that enables NASA science teams to access, analyze, and share research data more effectively. This work directly supports NASA's mission to make scientific discoveries accessible to researchers and the public under the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. CISTO provides high-end information technology systems and services for science, including assessment and evaluation of new information technologies, hardware, and software and manages one of two NASA High Performance Computer systems.

Requirements

Systems Engineering: Proven experience applying structured systems engineering processes to IT or cloud systems, with familiarity in agile/Scrum practices.
Requirements Management : Use of Jira for requirements management, traceability, and verification.
Cloud Platforms: Strong practical experience with major commercial cloud services (AWS, Azure, or GCP) for compute, networking, and data storage.
Implementation: Hands-on proficiency with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), such as Terraform, to translate architecture into working, repeatable cloud environments.
Security Awareness: Understanding of security engineering principles and standards, including NIST SP 800-53 and NIST SP 800-160 Rev 1.
Communication : Exceptional ability to communicate technical requirements and implementation status to diverse stakeholders, including non-technical scientists and senior architects.
A BS degree and 9+ years’ experience or a MS degree and 7+ years’ experience in relevant work areas.
US Citizenship required.
Ability to obtain and maintain a Tier 1 or Tier 2 Investigation through NASA.

Nice To Haves

Background supporting scientific computing or research environments.
Experience with multi-cloud architectures.
Familiarity with federal security frameworks (FISMA, NIST, etc.) and cloud security compliance requirements.
Experience in NASA’s High-End Computing (HEC) environment.

Responsibilities

Methodology Integration: Apply structured NASA systems engineering processes while operating in an agile development environment, ensuring traceability and compliance without sacrificing flexibility.
Requirements Translation: Translate mission objectives into system specifications, interface control documents, and testable acceptance criteria.
Reference Implementation and Prototyping: Collaborate with the system architect and engineering team to design reference implementations and prototypes of cloud services using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).
Traceability: Ensure traceability between user needs, system requirements, architecture design, and final implementation/testing.
Security and Compliance: Embed security principles and compliance requirements (FISMA, NIST SP 800-53, and NIST SP 800-160 Rev 1) into design and implementation patterns from the start (Security by Design).
Integration: Serve as the technical liaison between SCIP and other Science Mission Directorate (SMD) projects, ensuring architectural alignment and integration of SCIP services within the broader SMD cloud ecosystem.