Senior IT Systems Engineer

MIT Lincoln Laboratory•Lexington, MA

1d•$134,100 - $181,000

About The Position

The Senior IT Systems Engineer provides senior technical leadership for the design, evolution, and integration of MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s collateral enterprise computing environment. The role helps define the next generation of that environment by extending on-premises capabilities into a secure hybrid-cloud architecture that supports enterprise services and research missions while maintaining inspection-level readiness. The engineer serves as a technical authority across organizational and technology boundaries, translating mission and business requirements into enterprise technical direction and ensuring technology investments support a coherent long-term strategy. A significant near-term focus is establishing the foundation for expanded use of classified cloud capabilities, including AWS Secret Cloud for Industry (ASCI) and comparable offerings, and integrating these capabilities with existing collateral enterprise services. This includes defining patterns for cloud connectivity, workload isolation, identity and access, shared services, logging and monitoring, DevSecOps, data movement, security boundaries, and research and enterprise workload integration. The position works with infrastructure engineering, cybersecurity and information assurance, research organizations, enterprise applications, network engineering, cloud providers, and Laboratory leadership to establish standards and guide complex engineering decisions. The role also develops reusable designs, standards, roadmaps, and guardrails; leads technical design reviews; and mentors senior engineers across technology domains.

Requirements

10–15 years of experience designing and operating complex enterprise or mission computing environments.
Demonstrated experience developing technical designs spanning multiple infrastructure and application technology domains.
Demonstrated experience establishing classified or enterprise infrastructure environments, including governance and standardization across security domains.
Strong knowledge of hybrid-cloud technical design, including networking, compute, storage, identity, security, automation, and cloud-native services.
Experience with classified cloud approaches, such as AWS or comparable offerings, or broader hyperscale cloud environments.
Strong understanding of enterprise network design, segmentation, routing, firewalling, encryption, and secure connectivity.
Ability to translate business, mission, cybersecurity, and operational requirements into scalable technical designs.
Experience developing technical standards, reference designs, technology roadmaps, and design-review processes.
Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to technical audiences and senior leadership.
Ability to influence technical direction across organizational boundaries without relying solely on direct organizational authority.
Ability to obtain and maintain the security clearance required for the position.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a Secret-level DoD security clearance.
U.S. citizenship is required.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing or operating classified enterprise environments.
Experience with AWS Secret Cloud, AWS, or other classified commercial cloud offerings.
Familiarity with NIST, RMF, DISA STIGs, Zero Trust principles, and authorization processes applicable to classified systems.
Experience integrating cloud and on-premises environments at enterprise scale.
Experience supporting both enterprise and research or mission computing environments.
Experience with modern DevSecOps practices, infrastructure automation, configuration management, CI/CD, and software supply-chain security.
Experience with Linux, Ansible, GitHub or GitLab, JFrog, enterprise monitoring, configuration management, and cloud automation.
Experience with AI/ML infrastructure or managed AI services in controlled computing environments.

Responsibilities

Establish and maintain the target technical design for the collateral enterprise environment across on-premises infrastructure, classified cloud, networking, compute, storage, identity, security, DevSecOps, observability, and enterprise services.
Lead technical work for classified enterprise infrastructure and apply that experience to integrating classified cloud capabilities into the Laboratory enterprise.
Define technical patterns for a hybrid classified environment, including trusted on-premises access paths to classified cloud services and appropriately designed cloud workloads and services.
Serve as a senior technical authority for collateral cloud systems engineering, including integration of AWS and future classified cloud capabilities.
Develop designs for distinct research and enterprise cloud environments, with appropriate segmentation and workload zones for research computing, enterprise IaaS, enterprise AI services, shared applications, and externally provided services.
Define foundational cloud designs for network segmentation, VPCs, routing, firewalling, IAM, encryption and key management, centralized logging, monitoring, configuration management, security services, and workload isolation.
Establish reusable reference designs, engineering patterns, standards, and technical guardrails for consistent implementation across engineering teams.
Partner with cybersecurity, information assurance, and authorization stakeholders to ensure designs support security requirements and authorization processes without unnecessary complexity.
Determine how classified-cloud designs should integrate with, or remain independent from, existing on-premises enterprise services, including identity, logging, monitoring, configuration management, software repositories, DevSecOps tooling, and security services.
Evaluate emerging technologies and vendor capabilities and assess their suitability for tactical use or enterprise adoption.
Lead technical design reviews for significant initiatives and identify technical risks, dependencies, technical debt, and integration requirements before implementation.
Collaborate with team and department leadership to develop technical roadmaps connecting the current-state environment to the desired future state, including sequencing, dependencies, foundational investments, and transition strategies.
Bridge research organizations and enterprise IT by balancing standardization and governance with research and mission flexibility.
Mentor senior engineers across technology domains and strengthen systems thinking and engineering discipline within the organization.