Principal Systems Architect

Overview

• Infrastructure Engineering & Operations
• Hands-on Technical Leader and Executive Technical Advisor
• TISTA | Department of Veterans Affairs | Infrastructure Engineering & Operations (IE&O)
• Employment: Full-time
• Proposed Reporting: IE&O Program Manager; technical alignment with EAS

Work Arrangement: Customer engagement and site visits as required; final onsite/hybrid schedule and travel to be confirmed.

TISTA is seeking a Principal Systems Architect to serve as a hands-on technical leader and trusted advisor to VA Infrastructure Operations leadership. The role connects data center and cloud infrastructure, automation, application platforms, identity services, and business requirements into secure, scalable, reliable, and supportable solutions.

The successful candidate can move from an SES or C-level discussion to a design review, automation walkthrough, or production troubleshooting session. This individual combines strong systems thinking, practical engineering, executive presentation skills, and disciplined problem solving while supporting developers, operators, business customers, and accountable providers.

Deep hands-on capability in automation and hybrid infrastructure; broad systems-level understanding across performance, SRE, networking, databases, storage, application services, and ICAM.

At TISTA, you’ll do meaningful, mission‑driven work that improves lives alongside teammates you trust and leaders who are transparent and supportive. We invest in your learning and internal mobility so you can build a career that keeps advancing. We’re proud to serve and hire Veterans, and we put people first in everything we do.

TISTA associates enjoy above Industry Healthcare Benefits, Remote Working Options, Paid Time Off, Training/Certification opportunities, Healthcare Savings Account & Flexible Savings Account, Paid Life Insurance, Short-term & Long-term Disability, 401K Match, Tuition Reimbursement, Employee Assistance Program, Paid Holidays, Military Leave, and much more!

Responsibilities

Roles and Responsibilities:

Executive technical advisory:

Advise designated Senior Executive Service (SES), C-level, and technology leaders on infrastructure strategy, modernization options, technical risk, and service performance. Prepare concise decision briefs, architecture narratives, and presentations that explain alternatives, cost, dependencies, and recommended actions. Translate decisions into actionable engineering work.

End-to-end systems architecture:

Develop and review current-state and target-state architectures spanning physical data centers, cloud, compute, network, storage, operating systems, virtualization, containers, applications, and identity. Define interfaces, trust boundaries, capacity assumptions, failure modes, and operational responsibilities; turn approved designs into practical implementation packages.

Hands-on automation and engineering:

Develop, prototype, and review infrastructure-as-code, scripts, APIs, and orchestration workflows using approved tools. Build reusable Golden Paths with parameter validation, testing, secure credentials, safe retries, rollback, tagging, monitoring, and configuration-record updates. Explain what the automation does and diagnose failures beyond the tool interface.

Developer and business-customer partnership:

Work directly with development and business teams to translate customer needs into technical requirements, nonfunctional requirements, and acceptance criteria. Coordinate with Application Hosting on platform/runtime dependencies and with Application Services on application interfaces, middleware, release readiness, and support. Improve developer enablement without weakening production controls.

Systems troubleshooting and problem solving:

Investigate cross-layer failures and bottlenecks using logs, metrics, traces, configuration, workload behavior, and controlled tests. Coordinate specialists to distinguish application, identity, network, database, storage, and platform causes. Explain uncertainty, test hypotheses, validate root cause, and turn findings into durable corrective actions.

Scaling, performance engineering, and SRE:

Evaluate latency, throughput, concurrency, resource saturation, load balancing, caching, and scaling options. Apply site reliability engineering (SRE) practices, including service-level indicators/objectives, observability, capacity planning, reduction of repetitive operational work, and recovery validation. Assess the cost and reliability impact of proposed improvements.

Network, database, and storage integration:

Connect infrastructure design to DNS, routing, connectivity, firewalls, certificates, storage performance, data access, replication, backup, and recovery needs. Examine database connection patterns, query-related symptoms, and application/data dependencies with the relevant specialists. Identify architectural bottlenecks without claiming to replace every domain expert.

ICAM and security architecture:

Understand Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) dependencies across hosted applications and platforms. Work with ICAM/security specialists on authentication, authorization, federation, privileged access, certificates, service identities, and least privilege. Validate identity integration, migration impacts, support procedures, and appropriate security boundaries.

Data center and hybrid-cloud integration:

Participate in site assessments and review rack, power, cooling, cabling, connectivity, capacity, and configuration dependencies with DCCE and operations specialists. Compare cloud and on-premises placement using service requirements, resilience, lifecycle, operating constraints, and economics. Ground designs in the actual environment.

Engineering validation and lifecycle ownership:

Carry assigned solutions from discovery and prototyping through integration, testing, authorized deployment, and sustainment. Establish performance and recovery tests, runbooks, rollback plans, support ownership, and evidence. Keep architecture, configuration, service relationships, and technical-debt records current after deployment.

Cross-domain leadership and technical governance:

Contribute to Engineering, Architecture, Strategy and Governance (EAS), design reviews, reusable patterns, and the Automation and Engineering Center of Excellence. Mentor engineers and coordinate with SDI, FinOps, the Business Office, security, and providers. Evaluate cost, risk, effort, and operational value; preserve assigned scope and Government decision authority.

Representative Outputs:

Decision-ready executive briefings; integrated architecture and dependency diagrams; reusable automation; implementation and migration packages; performance and reliability assessments; root-cause findings; test/readiness evidence; and operational handover documentation.

Role Boundaries:

This role advises Government leaders and leads assigned contractor architecture and engineering; it does not exercise Government funding, contracting, policy, risk-acceptance, authorization, or acceptance authority. It complements the DCCE Lead through cross-stack architecture and service integration. Domain specialists and providers retain their assigned technical and operating responsibilities.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

Experience:

15+ years of progressively responsible systems or infrastructure engineering experience, including 5+ years as a systems architect, solution architect, principal engineer, or technical lead. These periods may overlap. Demonstrated participation in implementation and production support, not solely consulting recommendations or project administration.

Hands-on technical depth:

Recent practical experience designing, implementing, automating, and troubleshooting hybrid infrastructure. Ability to develop or critically review scripts, configuration, infrastructure-as-code, APIs, and deployment pipelines; explain technical decisions; and work directly with engineering teams. Relevant tools may include Terraform, Ansible, Python, PowerShell, Git, and comparable technologies.

Breadth across systems and platforms:

Substantial experience with enterprise data center infrastructure and at least one major cloud platform. Working knowledge of compute, operating systems, virtualization, container platforms, network, storage, database services, backup, and disaster recovery. Understand interactions and tradeoffs across the stack; deep specialist expertise in every technology is not required.

Performance and reliability:

Practical experience investigating performance or availability problems and improving scalability, observability, capacity, and recoverability. Ability to use evidence to separate symptoms from root causes and assess how a proposed change affects the complete service.

Application and identity understanding:

Experience supporting application hosting and development teams, understanding application dependencies, and integrating security and identity requirements. Working knowledge of ICAM concepts, including authentication versus authorization, federation, privileged access, and human/nonhuman identities; coordinate specialized implementations with accountable owners.

Executive advisory and communication:

Demonstrated experience advising C-level or equivalent senior Government leaders. Strong executive presentation, technical writing, workshop facilitation, and interpersonal skills. Ability to simplify complex issues without losing accuracy, present defensible options, respond to challenging questions, and influence across organizational boundaries.

Preferred Qualifications:

• San Diego-area residence or willingness to relocate; direct advisory experience with VA SES/OIT leadership; federal or regulated-enterprise delivery; multi-provider service integration; service catalog and ITSM/CMDB integration; FinOps-informed architecture; and establishment of reusable automation or platform engineering practices.
• Relevant cloud architecture, systems engineering, SRE, networking, security, or automation credentials are beneficial. Certifications supplement, rather than replace, demonstrated engineering delivery, problem solving, and executive communication.
• Internal posting note: Experience thresholds, reporting, and work arrangements are proposed recruiting criteria, not verified contractual labor-category minimums. HR and Contracts must confirm the labor category, equivalencies, compensation/posting details, site/travel expectations, and access requirements. San Diego is preferred, not a mandatory exclusion.
• Education and access readiness: Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information technology, information systems, or a related discipline, or an allowable equivalent combination of education and experience. Ability to meet applicable Government suitability, training, and access requirements and participate in required customer/site engagements.
• Clearance: Must be able to obtain a Tier 2 / Moderate Risk Public Trust and a VA PIV credential.
• Preferred Work location: San Diego, California.
• Pay Range: The suggested pay for this position ranges from $145,546 to $180,875.
• The actual salary offer will carefully consider a wide range of factors, including your skills, qualifications, experience, and location.
• Also, certain positions are eligible for additional forms of compensation, such as bonuses.
• TISTA associates are eligible to participate in our comprehensive benefits plan! More information can be found here: https://tistatech.com/working-at-tista/

Responsibilities

Roles and Responsibilities:

Executive technical advisory:

Advise designated Senior Executive Service (SES), C-level, and technology leaders on infrastructure strategy, modernization options, technical risk, and service performance. Prepare concise decision briefs, architecture narratives, and presentations that explain alternatives, cost, dependencies, and recommended actions. Translate decisions into actionable engineering work.

End-to-end systems architecture:

Develop and review current-state and target-state architectures spanning physical data centers, cloud, compute, network, storage, operating systems, virtualization, containers, applications, and identity. Define interfaces, trust boundaries, capacity assumptions, failure modes, and operational responsibilities; turn approved designs into practical implementation packages.

Hands-on automation and engineering:

Develop, prototype, and review infrastructure-as-code, scripts, APIs, and orchestration workflows using approved tools. Build reusable Golden Paths with parameter validation, testing, secure credentials, safe retries, rollback, tagging, monitoring, and configuration-record updates. Explain what the automation does and diagnose failures beyond the tool interface.

Developer and business-customer partnership:

Work directly with development and business teams to translate customer needs into technical requirements, nonfunctional requirements, and acceptance criteria. Coordinate with Application Hosting on platform/runtime dependencies and with Application Services on application interfaces, middleware, release readiness, and support. Improve developer enablement without weakening production controls.

Systems troubleshooting and problem solving:

Investigate cross-layer failures and bottlenecks using logs, metrics, traces, configuration, workload behavior, and controlled tests. Coordinate specialists to distinguish application, identity, network, database, storage, and platform causes. Explain uncertainty, test hypotheses, validate root cause, and turn findings into durable corrective actions.

Scaling, performance engineering, and SRE:

Evaluate latency, throughput, concurrency, resource saturation, load balancing, caching, and scaling options. Apply site reliability engineering (SRE) practices, including service-level indicators/objectives, observability, capacity planning, reduction of repetitive operational work, and recovery validation. Assess the cost and reliability impact of proposed improvements.

Network, database, and storage integration:

Connect infrastructure design to DNS, routing, connectivity, firewalls, certificates, storage performance, data access, replication, backup, and recovery needs. Examine database connection patterns, query-related symptoms, and application/data dependencies with the relevant specialists. Identify architectural bottlenecks without claiming to replace every domain expert.

ICAM and security architecture:

Understand Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) dependencies across hosted applications and platforms. Work with ICAM/security specialists on authentication, authorization, federation, privileged access, certificates, service identities, and least privilege. Validate identity integration, migration impacts, support procedures, and appropriate security boundaries.

Data center and hybrid-cloud integration:

Participate in site assessments and review rack, power, cooling, cabling, connectivity, capacity, and configuration dependencies with DCCE and operations specialists. Compare cloud and on-premises placement using service requirements, resilience, lifecycle, operating constraints, and economics. Ground designs in the actual environment.

Engineering validation and lifecycle ownership:

Carry assigned solutions from discovery and prototyping through integration, testing, authorized deployment, and sustainment. Establish performance and recovery tests, runbooks, rollback plans, support ownership, and evidence. Keep architecture, configuration, service relationships, and technical-debt records current after deployment.

Cross-domain leadership and technical governance:

Contribute to Engineering, Architecture, Strategy and Governance (EAS), design reviews, reusable patterns, and the Automation and Engineering Center of Excellence. Mentor engineers and coordinate with SDI, FinOps, the Business Office, security, and providers. Evaluate cost, risk, effort, and operational value; preserve assigned scope and Government decision authority.

Representative Outputs:

Decision-ready executive briefings; integrated architecture and dependency diagrams; reusable automation; implementation and migration packages; performance and reliability assessments; root-cause findings; test/readiness evidence; and operational handover documentation.

Role Boundaries:

This role advises Government leaders and leads assigned contractor architecture and engineering; it does not exercise Government funding, contracting, policy, risk-acceptance, authorization, or acceptance authority. It complements the DCCE Lead through cross-stack architecture and service integration. Domain specialists and providers retain their assigned technical and operating responsibilities.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

Experience:

15+ years of progressively responsible systems or infrastructure engineering experience, including 5+ years as a systems architect, solution architect, principal engineer, or technical lead. These periods may overlap. Demonstrated participation in implementation and production support, not solely consulting recommendations or project administration.

Hands-on technical depth:

Recent practical experience designing, implementing, automating, and troubleshooting hybrid infrastructure. Ability to develop or critically review scripts, configuration, infrastructure-as-code, APIs, and deployment pipelines; explain technical decisions; and work directly with engineering teams. Relevant tools may include Terraform, Ansible, Python, PowerShell, Git, and comparable technologies.

Breadth across systems and platforms:

Substantial experience with enterprise data center infrastructure and at least one major cloud platform. Working knowledge of compute, operating systems, virtualization, container platforms, network, storage, database services, backup, and disaster recovery. Understand interactions and tradeoffs across the stack; deep specialist expertise in every technology is not required.

Performance and reliability:

Practical experience investigating performance or availability problems and improving scalability, observability, capacity, and recoverability. Ability to use evidence to separate symptoms from root causes and assess how a proposed change affects the complete service.

Application and identity understanding:

Experience supporting application hosting and development teams, understanding application dependencies, and integrating security and identity requirements. Working knowledge of ICAM concepts, including authentication versus authorization, federation, privileged access, and human/nonhuman identities; coordinate specialized implementations with accountable owners.

Executive advisory and communication:

Demonstrated experience advising C-level or equivalent senior Government leaders. Strong executive presentation, technical writing, workshop facilitation, and interpersonal skills. Ability to simplify complex issues without losing accuracy, present defensible options, respond to challenging questions, and influence across organizational boundaries.

Preferred Qualifications:

• San Diego-area residence or willingness to relocate; direct advisory experience with VA SES/OIT leadership; federal or regulated-enterprise delivery; multi-provider service integration; service catalog and ITSM/CMDB integration; FinOps-informed architecture; and establishment of reusable automation or platform engineering practices.
• Relevant cloud architecture, systems engineering, SRE, networking, security, or automation credentials are beneficial. Certifications supplement, rather than replace, demonstrated engineering delivery, problem solving, and executive communication.
• Internal posting note: Experience thresholds, reporting, and work arrangements are proposed recruiting criteria, not verified contractual labor-category minimums. HR and Contracts must confirm the labor category, equivalencies, compensation/posting details, site/travel expectations, and access requirements. San Diego is preferred, not a mandatory exclusion.
• Education and access readiness: Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information technology, information systems, or a related discipline, or an allowable equivalent combination of education and experience. Ability to meet applicable Government suitability, training, and access requirements and participate in required customer/site engagements.
• Clearance: Must be able to obtain a Tier 2 / Moderate Risk Public Trust and a VA PIV credential.
• Preferred Work location: San Diego, California.
• Pay Range: The suggested pay for this position ranges from $145,546 to $180,875.
• The actual salary offer will carefully consider a wide range of factors, including your skills, qualifications, experience, and location.
• Also, certain positions are eligible for additional forms of compensation, such as bonuses.
• TISTA associates are eligible to participate in our comprehensive benefits plan! More information can be found here: https://tistatech.com/working-at-tista/