Senior Systems Engineer #5480

Other Duties/ Responsibilities

• Participate in on-site and on-call rotation.

Required Work Experience

• Five to eight years of relevant work experience (GED), three to six (Associates), one to three year (Bachelor’s), one to two (Master’s).

Required Special Skills/ Knowledge

• Manages current storage capacity and ensures storage is available to support all computing environments; plans for future storage growth; monitors and confirms that system files and application products are successfully backed-up;
  performs necessary installations, patches, and upgrades.
• Works escalated issues from lower-tier team members. Mentors/relays information on solutions to train others.
• Analyzes new hardware and software releases for their impact on the Senate environment; tests new releases on Senate supported platforms; develops product configuration standards for use in the Senate environment.
• Creates, develops, modifies, instructs and provides technical assistance on business continuity plans and processes

As part of our hiring process, we may conduct a skills assessment to better understand an applicant’s proficiency in key areas relevant to the role. 

Desired Qualifications

• Expert level experience in any database type administration role.
• 4+ Years of experience in Linux operating system.
• 2+ Years of experience with DevOps development.
• Manage multi-stage pipelines for build, test, and deploy processes, ensuring reliable and fast delivery of applications.
• Set up real-time alerting for failed jobs, builds and databases, ensuring quick resolution of incidents in production or pre-production environments.
• Knowledge of optimizing MongoDB performance by configuring indexes, managing query efficiency, and tuning the database for workload-specific performance. This includes memory management, cache optimization, and monitoring tools like Ops Manager to proactively address performance bottlenecks.
• Ability to configure PostgreSQL monitoring and alerting using PGMonitor.
• Design and maintain a Disaster Recovery architecture utilizing replication over a LAN for MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• Working knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) Syntax, including the ability to manage the data within a PostgreSQL or MySQL database.
• Knowledge of setting up backup and recovery strategies along with replication for high availability.
• Manage databases in cloud environments, ensuring backups and scaling are automated.
• Experience using a commercial Content Delivery Network (CDN) as a frontend to cache, distribute, and protect public-facing websites is a plus.
• Scripting and development skills (Ansible, Bash, Python, and PowerShell).

Desired Certifications

• Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS).
• PostgreSQL Database Administration Certified Professional.
• MongoDB Associate Database Administrator.

Working Conditions

• Since this position requires onsite presence in support of the U.S. Senate when in session, this position requires the employee to be available and prepared to work during government shutdowns, in inclement weather, on holidays, and during late night, overnight, and weekend sessions. In the context of government furloughs, this position is considered excepted (EO (50188, 50168, 50204, 50169) only)
• This position directly supports essential services of the U.S. Senate. As such, this position requires the employee be available and prepared to work during government shutdowns, in inclement weather, on holidays, weekends, and during late nights to ensure essential services to the Senate continue without interruption. In the context of government furloughs, this position is considered excepted (EA, EO, CTI only).
• The U.S. Senate network cannot be taken offline for maintenance during the workday, or while the Senate is in session. As such, maintenance windows may only occur at night, on weekends, and occasionally on holidays. Employees who perform systems upgrades, maintenance, wiring, backups, support our alternate data centers will have schedules that include working nights, weekends, and holidays. (EA, EO, Support Operations only)
• No exceptional physical demands

Security Clearance

• This position requires that the applicant obtain and maintain a Secret U.S. Government security clearance.
• Applicants must be U.S. citizens in order for the SAA to submit your application for a security clearance.