Systems Administrator

Peraton•Herndon, VA

20h•$86,000 - $138,000

About The Position

Peraton Labs is seeking a System Administrator to ensure the reliability, availability, and security of the Peraton[x] platform and the supporting infrastructure that powers our generative AI and analytic capabilities. This role sits at the intersection of operations, user support, and platform engineering, ensuring that Peraton[x] environments remain healthy, issues are resolved quickly, and end users have the access and tooling they need to be productive. This individual will own day-to-day system uptime monitoring, log review, trouble ticket triage, and user administration across the cloud and on-premises environments that host Peraton[x]. They will work closely with the Peraton[x] product, software engineering, and DevSecOps teams — as well as end users across mission programs — to identify recurring issues, drive root-cause analysis, and continuously improve the operational posture of the platform. The ideal candidate brings a strong service-oriented mindset, sharp diagnostic instincts, and a bias toward automation and durable fixes over one-off workarounds. As a System Administrator on Peraton[x], you will also play a critical role in shaping the user experience of the platform — onboarding new users, managing access controls, refining runbooks, and serving as a trusted first responder when something goes wrong. Your work will directly enable analysts, developers, and mission stakeholders to focus on their work with confidence that the platform behind them is stable and secure.

Requirements

Minimum of a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
5+ years of hands-on system administration experience in production Linux and/or Windows environments
Demonstrated experience monitoring system health, reviewing logs, and triaging production incidents end-to-end
Working knowledge of common log analysis and monitoring tooling (e.g., ELK / OpenSearch, Splunk, Grafana, Prometheus, CloudWatch, or equivalent)
Experience administering identity and access management — creating, modifying, and deprovisioning user accounts, managing groups, and enforcing role-based access controls
Experience operating in at least one major cloud environment (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including familiarity with core compute, storage, networking, and IAM services
Proficiency with shell scripting and at least one general-purpose scripting language (e.g., Bash, PowerShell, Python) for automating routine tasks
Familiarity with ITSM/ticketing platforms (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, Remedy) and structured incident triage workflows
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly document issues, resolutions, and procedures for both technical and non-technical audiences
Comfort working in fast-paced, mission-oriented environments with shifting priorities and the discipline to follow change-management and security policies
US Citizenship with the ability to obtain and maintain required security clearances or suitability determinations

Nice To Haves

Prior experience supporting government, intelligence community, or defense customers
Active security clearance or prior experience operating in a classified environment
Industry certifications such as CompTIA Security+, Linux+, Network+, AWS SysOps Administrator, Azure Administrator, or Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
Experience with configuration management and infrastructure-as-code tooling (Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, or Chef)
Experience administering containerized and orchestrated workloads (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift)
Familiarity with directory services and federated identity (Active Directory, LDAP, SAML, OIDC, Okta, Keycloak)
Exposure to security frameworks and compliance regimes such as NIST 800-53, FedRAMP, or DoD STIGs
Experience contributing to or leading on-call rotations and post-incident review processes
Background in driving operational improvements — reducing recurring tickets, automating toil, or improving mean-time-to-resolution
Experience supporting AI/ML, generative AI, or analytic platform products in production
Experience producing operational dashboards, SOPs, or onboarding materials that improve self-service for end users

Responsibilities

Monitor system uptime, performance, and availability of the Peraton[x] platform across cloud and on-premises environments, responding promptly to alerts and outages
Review and analyze system, application, and security logs to identify anomalies, performance issues, and potential security events
Triage incoming trouble tickets from Peraton[x] users, diagnose root causes, and either resolve issues directly or route them to the appropriate engineering team
Perform user administration tasks including account provisioning, deprovisioning, group membership, role-based access control, and password resets
Maintain and tune monitoring, alerting, and dashboarding tooling to ensure issues are surfaced before they impact users
Execute routine system maintenance including patching, backups, certificate rotation, and capacity checks on a defined cadence
Document recurring issues, resolutions, and standard operating procedures in shared runbooks and knowledge bases
Partner with the Peraton[x] DevSecOps and software engineering teams to remediate vulnerabilities, harden configurations, and apply security baselines
Support incident response activities including initial triage, evidence preservation, communication, and post-incident reviews
Identify opportunities to automate manual operational tasks using scripting and infrastructure-as-code
Track and report on key operational metrics such as uptime, mean-time-to-resolution, ticket backlog, and recurring incident categories
Serve as a primary point of contact for Peraton[x] end users on access, environment, and platform-availability questions