Senior System Engineer

Belay Technologies has been voted Baltimore Business Journal's (BBJ) Best Places to Work 2026!
 

Belay Technologies is seeking a System Engineer to join our intel team. Join a high-impact, mission-driven team as Lead DevOps Engineer, where you will help manage the stability, security, and scalability of systems powering complex data transformation workflows and a widely used web-based user interface. Embedded within a broader engineering organization of 25+ developers, you will lead a small, agile DevOps/SysAdmin team responsible for end-to-end infrastructure, from bare-metal and AWS environments to Kubernetes deployments. In this role, you will collaborate across software teams to help architect robust systems, support development processes, maintain metrics and observability to track uptime and performance of systems, and mentor other team members in modern automation tools using Ansible, Terraform, and Podman, as well as testing and deployment strategies.

This mature project is known for its technical stability, team cohesion, and deep integration into mission-critical systems, offering you the opportunity to make meaningful contributions in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and direct the daily tasks of two system administrators.
• Collaborate with and support the larger team of 25+ software engineers.
• Provide guidance, advice, and assistance for overall system design and setup, in conjunction with software engineering teams.
• Maintain system platforms and health of all servers (EC2, MASH, bare metal), production systems, development environments.
• Facilitate migration of Apache Nifi installations and other services from MASH environment to AWS cloud-based architecture.
• Oversee system maintenance, security, and SSP accreditations.
• Observability of the system, e.g. automation, monitoring, alerting, backup, and disaster recovery strategies for all development, staging, and production environments.
• Maintain deployment automation process (e.g. CI/CD in GitLab).
• Perform database administration with databases such as Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Redis, or graph databases (eg. DGraph).
• Ensure system documentation is up to date, and conduct regular technical reviews and post-mortems to drive continuous improvement in team operations.
• Maintain base Linux kickstart images (RHEL9).

Candidates should have the following qualifications: 

• TS/SCI Clearance with polygraph
• Requirement: 12 yrs., B.S. in a technical discipline or 4 additional yrs. in place of B.S.

Skills Requirements:

• Strong Linux system administration experience (eg., RHEL9).
• Experience in containerization using Podman and Kubernetes for deploying and managing applications.
• Amazon AWS experience (setting up EC2 instances, S3 buckets, VPCs, IAM).
• Proficient in system automation and scripting tools such as Ansible (including Semaphore), Terraform, Packer, Bash, and Python.
• Knowledge of SSP compliance and processes, including STE/STN.
• Metrics and observability with Kibana, Grafana, and Prometheus.

Nice to Haves:

• Apache Nifi dataflow experience.
• Familiarity with database administration with databases such as Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Redis, or graph databases (eg. DGraph).
• Elastic stack experience (logstash, filebeat, etc.).
• Graph database experience.
• Experience with other AWS tools such as EKS, ECS, Lambdas, and Secrets Manager.
• CI/CD in GitLab.
• CNO experience.
• Experience facilitating low-to-high development.
• Cisco networking experience.

Perks and Benefits:

• 8 weeks paid leave - 4 weeks of personal leave, 3 Yay! days, take off on your birthday,11 paid holidays and optional leave up to 6 days through Belay's volunteer program
• 10% matching in 401(k) contributions vested on day one
• $5,000 annual training/tuition
• Student Loan Repayment Program
• 100% company-funded HSA
• Rich medical coverage (100% coinsurance)
• Dental coverage including orthodontia
• Up to $420,000 in life insurance, premiums 100% company funded
• Amazon Prime, gym reimbursement, monthly lunches, games and prizes
• Pet adoption program, generous referral bonus program, fun events, and more!

At Belay, we are committed to creating an environment where you can thrive both professionally and personally.  We believe in transparency and fairness in compensation. Several factors influence final salary including, but not limited to, geographic location, Federal Government contract labor categories and contract wage rates, relevant prior work experience, education, specific skills and competencies and certifications. Belay offers a competitive total compensation package that includes benefits and perks, a flexible work-life balance, and career development.

Salary Range: $168,000 to $240,000

Belay Technologies is a certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business located in Columbia, Maryland (Baltimore/Washington area). Belay Technologies specializes in systems automation and full stack development. Belay Technologies provides leading technology and engineering solutions to the DoD, as well as state-of-the-art commercial products. We hire software engineers, web designers, test engineers, systems engineers, systems administrators, database engineers and other tech services. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, genetic factors, military/veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.