Senior Infrastructure Automation Engineer

TISTA Science and Technology Corporation•Rockville, MD

About The Position

TISTA is hiring hands-on Infrastructure Automation Engineers for the Department of Veterans Affairs Infrastructure Engineering & Operations (IE&O) On-Premises Automation Center of Excellence (CoE). Engineers will build, operate, and continuously improve reusable automation for on-premises infrastructure using Ansible, OpenTofu, Terraform, Red Hat OpenShift, and VMware technologies. The role automates provisioning and lifecycle management for virtual machines, storage, databases, and supporting services, translating approved designs into tested, version-controlled Golden Paths that Application Hosting and Application Services teams can adopt, operate, and extend. This is a builder role focused on writing and troubleshooting automation, verifying that it works, enabling other teams to use it, and maintaining it after release. Capabilities are expected to provide traceable execution evidence, supportable services, and measurable reductions in technical debt and manual effort. The CoE engineers reusable capabilities and supports agreed execution; VA retains applicable decision and acceptance authority, while App Hosting, App Services, and other providers retain their assigned operational responsibilities. Engineers must coordinate privileges and changes with resource owners and use only authorized tools, interfaces, data access, and environments. The proposed reporting line is to a designated Automation CoE Lead, with technical alignment to EAS. Location and work arrangement are to be confirmed, with customer and site engagement as required. The posting describes full-time employment and multiple engineering positions. TISTA describes its work as mission-driven and notes investment in learning and internal mobility, as well as support for Veterans.

Requirements

Proposed senior-level benchmark of 7 or more years in systems, platform, or infrastructure engineering, including 3 or more years developing and supporting production infrastructure automation; the periods overlap.
Evidence of personally authored code and implemented workflows; tool administration experience alone is insufficient.
Recent hands-on Ansible development and practical Terraform or OpenTofu experience, with the ability to explain and troubleshoot playbooks, roles, modules, inventory, variable handling, APIs, plans, state, dependencies, and failures.
Strong experience in one infrastructure-as-code engine is acceptable; demonstrated ability to learn and validate compatibility with the other is expected.
Production automation experience in at least one of VMware vSphere/vCenter or Red Hat OpenShift, with ability to integrate with adjacent infrastructure domains. Cloud-only automation without credible on-premises implementation evidence does not satisfy the role.
Working knowledge of Linux and/or Windows administration, network/DNS/connectivity dependencies, storage, identity/permissions, databases, backup, and recovery.
Direct automation depth in at least one of storage or database lifecycle integration; deeper expertise in both is valued. Work with specialists where needed rather than claim universal expertise.
Experience with Git-based collaboration, code review, reusable components, automated testing, release promotion, and scripting with Python, PowerShell, Bash, or comparable languages.
Ability to secure credentials and state, limit change impact, handle repeat execution and partial failures, protect data, and support automation after release.
Ability to gather requirements from hosting/application teams, demonstrate working automation, document interfaces and support procedures, and train consumers.
Ability to communicate progress, failures, risks, and measured outcomes in plain language and provide auditable evidence to Government leaders. Prior C-level/SES advisory employment is not required.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information technology, information systems, or a related field, or an allowable equivalent combination of education and experience.
Ability to meet applicable Government suitability, training, site-access, and system-access requirements.
Must be able to obtain and maintain the personnel suitability, credentials, system access, and training required per a Tier 4 / High Risk clearance.
All hires must personally build Ansible content and Terraform/OpenTofu automation, work in Git, test changes, troubleshoot failures, document interfaces, and support adoption.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Ansible Automation Platform controller administration and execution environments.
Experience with OpenShift GitOps, Operators, or virtualization.
Experience with API-based storage or database provisioning.
Experience in restricted or disconnected environments.
Experience with ITSM/CMDB and service-catalog integration.
Experience with infrastructure compliance automation and observability.
Experience with a supported internal automation-product library.
Experience in VA, federal, or regulated environments.
Experience developing reusable patterns adopted by other teams.
Experience delivering measurable technical-debt remediation.
Relevant Red Hat, VMware, infrastructure-as-code, or automation credentials; certifications supplement demonstrated delivery and do not replace it.
Specialty depth in VMware/compute automation, OpenShift/platform automation, storage/database automation, or automation-platform quality.

Responsibilities

Develop integrated on-premises workflows for approved VM creation, operating-system configuration, storage allocation, database provisioning, and supporting network, identity, backup, and monitoring tasks.
Implement input validation, dependency checks, resource tagging, service-instance linkage, configuration-record updates, and post-provisioning verification through accountable domain teams and approved interfaces.
Author and maintain Ansible playbooks, roles, collections, inventories, and reusable workflow templates, including repeatable behavior, controlled credentials, error handling, bounded retries, and useful execution logs.
Configure assigned approved automation-controller capabilities, execution environments, access controls, and schedules; avoid relying on manual console actions for automated paths.
Develop reusable Terraform and/or OpenTofu modules, parameters, outputs, provider integrations, and plan/review/apply pipelines.
Protect remote state and sensitive plan data; implement supported locking, drift assessment, version pinning, and controlled import of existing resources; validate engine and provider compatibility and establish a clear state/control owner for each managed resource.
Automate VMware vSphere/vCenter templates and VM lifecycle, guest configuration, network and storage attachments, and inventory reconciliation.
For assigned OpenShift work, automate projects/namespaces, access, quotas, application configuration, and persistent storage using approved APIs, Operators, and GitOps patterns; validate prerequisites, permissions, capacity, and dependencies.
Create reusable workflows for storage provisioning, attachment, expansion, permissions, and safe retirement.
Partner with storage and database specialists on database installation and configuration, connectivity, access, backup onboarding, recovery tests, and approved maintenance while protecting persistent data.
Implement code review, automated validation, nonproduction testing, policy checks, and controlled promotion; test reruns, partial failures, permissions, connectivity, drift, and restore/recovery paths.
Define resource-appropriate rollback or compensating actions, retain failed-run evidence, and reconcile resources left behind.
Maintain assigned execution infrastructure, runners, repositories, approved artifact mirrors, collections/providers, state services, and test environments; address vulnerabilities, upgrades, compatibility, capacity, and backup/recovery.
Assign owners to automation assets and manage release notes, supported versions, deprecation, incidents, and recurring defects.
Package automation as reusable Golden Paths with clear inputs and outputs, versioned dependencies, tests, access prerequisites, runbooks, and support responsibilities.
Co-design capabilities with Application Hosting and Application Services, demonstrate functionality, conduct pairing and training, onboard consuming teams, and incorporate feedback.
Prefer configurable shared modules over unmanaged copies and one-off scripts.
Publish role-appropriate views of backlog, ownership, milestones, blockers, approved releases, execution results, adoption, and service outcomes through approved reporting/SDI interfaces.
Link requests or technical-debt items to code versions, runs, resources, tests, and acceptance; automate and verify remediation of legacy builds, configuration drift, inconsistent templates, unsupported components, orphaned resources, and repeat incidents.
Produce reusable Ansible content and IaC modules, integrated VM/storage/database workflows, OpenShift patterns, tests and recovery evidence, catalog integration, operational runbooks, adoption guides, versioned releases, leadership dashboards, and verified technical-debt closure records.