Systems Technical Director

ICF•Reston, VA

1d•Remote

About The Position

The Systems Technical Director serves as the senior engineering leader and overall technical authority for a mission-critical data collection and performance reporting platform used by federal grantees and program staff. The role oversees platform operations and maintenance as well as development, modernization, and enhancement. It connects architecture, delivery, operations, and modernization into a coherent program plan, guiding engineering workstreams and team leads while ensuring that releases are secure, testable, supportable, and aligned with program priorities. The director balances reliable operation of the existing .NET platform with incremental modernization, improved cloud and deployment practices, stronger data quality, better observability, and sustainable technical-debt reduction. The position evaluates designs, challenges assumptions, troubleshoots difficult issues, and advises the client on technical options and tradeoffs. It coordinates engineering across application development, architecture, cloud, DevSecOps, databases, security, quality assurance, accessibility, data, user experience, and operations. The program team also includes product managers, business analysts, data analysts, and behavioral health subject matter experts. The role requires a related bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience; extensive experience with resilient enterprise applications and data platforms, C#/.NET, APIs, relational databases, technical leadership, architecture decisions, engineering practices, and secure handling of sensitive information. The position is contingent. Work is performed within the United States, and the employee must be authorized to work in the United States and able to obtain and maintain a favorable Public Trust determination and complete background screening.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
7+ years architecting, delivering, or overseeing resilient production enterprise applications and data platforms, including demonstrated ability to lead teams working with C#/.NET, ASP.NET MVC or Web API, and relational databases such as SQL Server.
5+ years architecting APIs, enterprise integrations, or distributed application services across modern application stacks; ability to evaluate .NET design decisions and guide hands-on engineering leads.
3+ years leading engineering teams, technical leads, or multiple engineering workstreams, including Agile delivery, estimation, dependency management, and technical risk management.
3+ years making and documenting architecture decisions across applications, data, integrations, cloud infrastructure, security, and operations, and communicating tradeoffs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
3+ years establishing or improving engineering practices for automated testing, code quality, source control, CI/CD, release management, and production support.
3+ years guiding the design or implementation of authentication, authorization, role-based access, privacy protections, and secure handling of sensitive data.
Authorization to work in the United States and ability to perform all work within the United States.
Ability to obtain and maintain a favorable Public Trust determination and complete required background screening.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading incremental modernization of a large legacy .NET platform, including sequencing technical debt reduction while maintaining reliable production service.
Experience guiding AWS or AWS GovCloud architecture and operations, including cost optimization, capacity planning, observability, and service reliability.
Experience establishing deployment and security automation using CI/CD platforms, containers, infrastructure as code, and repeatable environment configuration.
Experience supporting federal authorization efforts, including NIST Moderate controls, FedRAMP, ATO processes, and preparation of technical evidence.
Experience overseeing architecture for high-volume data collection, batch ingestion, ETL, data quality, and reporting or business intelligence integrations; experience with Alteryx and Tableau is a plus.
Experience guiding federated identity architecture, including single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and fine-grained access controls; Okta experience is a plus.
Experience leading complex production incident response, root-cause analysis, and improvements that prevent recurring issues.
Experience providing technical leadership for federal government, public health, grants management, behavioral health, or performance measurement programs.

Responsibilities

Define and maintain the program engineering strategy, technical roadmap, architecture guardrails, and incremental modernization approach.
Lead engineering team leads and multiple development workstreams by aligning priorities, capacity, dependencies, standards, and delivery expectations.
Provide technical direction across application architectures, including .NET-based systems, APIs, data models and SQL Server solutions, system integrations, analytics and reporting platforms, and cloud-hosted services.
Establish program-wide practices for secure development, automated testing, code review, CI/CD, release readiness, documentation, and production support.
Evaluate technical options and communicate recommendations, costs, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs to program leadership and federal stakeholders.
Partner with product and delivery leaders to shape release plans, estimates, staffing needs, and technically achievable acceptance criteria.
Coordinate architecture and delivery across cloud, DevSecOps, database, security, quality assurance, accessibility, data, user experience, and operations teams.
Identify and manage technical debt, performance constraints, reliability risks, integration dependencies, and modernization sequencing.
Oversee response to complex production issues, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and improvements to monitoring and operational readiness.
Mentor engineering leads and senior engineers, strengthen technical decision-making, and build consistent engineering practices across the program.
Maintain technical roadmaps, decision records, interface documentation, standards, and executive-ready status reporting.