Lead Systems Engineer

Unissant, Inc. delivers innovative capabilities to the agencies that keep our nation healthy and safe. We apply our domain expertise, data acumen, and technology know-how to achieve breakthrough results for our clients. Working collaboratively, we advance missions and careers through a focus on honesty, integrity, and dependability. We continuously look for talent, excited to join that effort. To learn more about our exciting organization, please visit us at

We are seeking a Lead Systems Engineer to join our team and support our client.

The ideal candidate will lead enterprise-level systems engineering, capability planning, and modernization roadmap development in support of a large federal enterprise IT services program, working closely with government stakeholders, program leadership, engineers, technical leads, and mission partners to define the future-state enterprise environment and develop a phased, executable strategy and roadmap for modernization. This individual will translate mission needs, operational priorities, stakeholder requirements, and technology opportunities into an integrated plan that sequences capabilities across defined planning epochs, establishes dependencies and milestones, and informs investment and implementation decisions.

The successful candidate will bring a strong background in enterprise systems engineering, requirements analysis, capability-based planning, architecture development, and integrated schedule planning. The role requires the ability to connect strategic modernization objectives with actionable engineering planning while balancing mission priorities, technical dependencies, operational continuity, and resource constraints.

This is a technical leadership role for an individual who can operate across the enterprise, facilitate complex stakeholder decisions, and produce the engineering artifacts and roadmaps needed to guide long-term modernization.

• Lead development and maintenance of the systems modernization roadmap, defining the target state, intermediate states, transition strategies, and sequencing of modernization initiatives.
• Develop capability-based plans across multiple planning epochs, establishing the capabilities required in each period, their dependencies, prerequisites, and anticipated outcomes.
• Assess the current enterprise environment, identify capability gaps and technical limitations, and recommend modernization priorities aligned with mission objectives and government strategy.
• Translate strategic objectives into actionable engineering plans, including implementation phases, decision points, milestones, dependencies, and transition timelines.
• Evaluate modernization alternatives, legacy system constraints, technology opportunities, and integration considerations to inform technical recommendations and investment decisions.
• Identify and manage cross-system dependencies, sequencing constraints, critical-path activities, risks, and schedule impacts across multiple modernization initiatives.
• Coordinate with program management, technical leads, architects, and delivery teams to validate estimates, assumptions, resource requirements, and implementation feasibility.
• Engage government mission owners, operational users, program leadership, and technical stakeholders to elicit, analyze, validate, and prioritize enterprise requirements.
• Translate mission objectives and operational needs into measurable capability requirements, functional requirements, system requirements, and technical constraints.
• Analyze conflicting requirements, identify gaps and ambiguities, and develop recommendations that balance mission value, technical feasibility, cost, schedule, and risk.
• Apply systems engineering principles across the enterprise lifecycle, from mission analysis and requirements development through architecture definition, integration planning, deployment, and sustainment.
• Analyze system-of-systems dependencies and assess the impacts of proposed changes across applications, infrastructure, data, cloud services, networks, cybersecurity, and shared enterprise capabilities.
• Support technical trade studies, feasibility assessments, gap analyses, risk assessments, and alternatives analyses to inform architecture and modernization decisions.
• Identify emerging technical and operational risks and develop mitigation strategies, escalation paths, and decision options.

• 8+ years of relevant professional experience, including…