System Administrator – SME (Cloud, Hybrid)

Peraton•,

5d•$112,000 - $179,000•Remote

About The Position

Peraton is seeking an experienced System Administrator – Subject Matter Expert (SME) specializing in cloud and hybrid computing environments to support the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). In this senior-level role, you will serve as a key technical advisor and hands-on administrator across a complex hybrid infrastructure spanning on-premises data center environments and multi-cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Requirements

Bachelors degree and 10 years professional experience, or a Masters degree and 8 years professional experience, or an Associates degree and 12 years professional experience; or a high school diploma/equivalent and 14 years’ professional experience.
U.S. Citizenship required; must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance; all work must be performed within the United States
Extensive experience in systems administration across hybrid IT environments (on-premises + cloud).
Demonstrated expertise administering vCenter, ESXi/vSphere (6.x/7.x/8.x), vROPS, and VMware Log Insight in large-scale enterprise environments.
Hands-on experience with EC2, S3, CloudFormation, and workload migration tooling (e.g., Application Migration Service); ability to design, deploy, and maintain cloud infrastructure supporting production workloads.
Proficiency administering Windows Server (2016/2019/2022) and Linux/UNIX environments (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu) in enterprise or Federal settings.
Experience managing NAS, SAN, and enterprise hardware platforms from Dell, HP, NetApp, or comparable vendors.
Working knowledge of enterprise backup and replication solutions; experience designing or implementing Backup-to-Cloud and DR strategies.
Familiarity with AWS, Azure, and GCP; ability to advise on workload placement, cost optimization, and architecture trade-offs.
Experience with Active Directory, Group Policy, PKI, and enterprise IAM.
Demonstrated ability to perform zero-downtime upgrades, migrations, and hardware decommissions in production environments.
Strong written and verbal skills; ability to produce technical documentation and present to technical peers and senior leadership.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or Enterprise Architecture or a related technical field is strongly preferred
AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional) or equivalent AWS certification.
VMware Certified Professional (VCP-DCV or VCP-VCF) or equivalent VMware certification.
Experience with Kubernetes (on-premises, AWS, or bare metal) and container orchestration for production workloads.
Jenkins (CI/CD), Ansible (configuration management/automation), or comparable pipeline tools.
Datadog, Splunk, Elasticsearch, or VMware Log Insight for enterprise observability.
Exposure to Pivotal Cloud Foundry or comparable PaaS platforms in enterprise or multi-cloud environments.
Prior support of USGS, DOI, or other Federal OCIO environments; familiarity with CHS (Cloud Hosting Solutions) infrastructure.
Professional Scrum Master (PSM) or comparable Agile certification; experience working in sprint-based delivery models.
AWS Certified AI Practitioner, Google Generative AI credentials, or hands-on experience with cloud-native AI/ML services.
Experience with Oracle databases on KVM/Red Hat Linux or comparable enterprise database infrastructure.
Experience leading or mentoring junior technical staff in a professional IT environment.

Responsibilities

Administer and maintain Windows Server and Linux/UNIX-based operating systems (Red Hat, Ubuntu, macOS, and comparable distributions) running on enterprise hardware including Dell, HP x86, and Oracle SPARC platforms across multiple physical data centers.
Administer VMware vCloud, vSphere, vCenter, and Enterprise Plus virtualization environments; manage VMware Operations (vROPS) and Log Insight for performance monitoring, optimization, and troubleshooting; support System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) as needed.
Administer and optimize AWS environments (EC2, S3, CloudFormation, Application Migration Service, and related services); provide expert guidance on cloud and cluster computing architectures; research, evaluate, and deploy advanced cloud computing capabilities and large-data analytics solutions for the program.
Lead and support data integration and workload migration efforts from on-premises infrastructure to cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP); document migration paths, develop runbooks, and execute cutovers with minimal-to-no customer downtime.
Administer NAS and SAN storage devices; manage enterprise backup software; implement and maintain Backup-to-Cloud replication and disaster recovery (DR) solutions to meet program continuity requirements.
Advise OCIO leadership and program stakeholders on cloud and hybrid computing architectures, system and memory management optimization across distributed platforms, and best practices for workload placement and resource utilization.
Apply OS, hypervisor, and application-level security patches to resolve vulnerabilities; maintain compliance with DOI/USGS security standards and Information Assurance Vulnerability Alert (IAVA) remediation timelines.
Design and maintain operational monitoring dashboards (vROPS, Datadog, CloudWatch, or comparable tools) for CPU, memory, and storage utilization; troubleshoot and resolve performance and availability incidents across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure.
Leverage container and automation tooling (Kubernetes, Jenkins, Ansible, or comparable platforms) to support workload modernization, CI/CD pipeline operations, and infrastructure-as-code deployments.
Maintain accurate technical documentation including architecture diagrams, configuration records, migration plans, and runbooks; collaborate using Government-provided tools (Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Teams).