Solutions Consultant

NREL is located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado and serves as the nation's primary laboratory for energy systems research and development.

Location:

CO - Golden

Position Type:
Regular

Hours per Week: 40

The Solutions Consultant will serve as the primary point of contact for the National Security Research Office (NSRO) team to coordinate and provide IT solutions and support. Working closely with research and operations staff, the consultant will define, scope, and coordinate needs, ensuring compliance with cybersecurity and ITS standards. Responsibilities include troubleshooting desktop, storage, compute, cyber, networking, and coordinating with subject matter experts.

The role also involves managing application assistance and operations for research applications beyond standard ITS support, requiring basic administration of Windows, Linux, and networking.

• Work with mission-related staff to scope needs, provide solutions, and offer support.
• Create and define standard workflow processes for intake and client feedback.
• Perform network support, including checking connections, enabling ports, and troubleshooting equipment‑to‑switch connections.
• Document telecom room cabling and laboratory point drops, maintaining system configuration documentation.
• Collaborate with ITS teams to ensure proposed solutions adhere to ITS standards, best practices, and are supportable.
• Support incident response, troubleshooting, administration, and operational support for ITS‑supported systems.
• Ensure Cyber input and intervention for customer requests as required, supporting Cyber assessment.
• Work with customers to maintain optimal performance and functionality of supported systems.
• Cultivate relationships with teams internal and external to ITS to deliver services.
• Develop and enhance skills for adequate operational support.
• Contribute to incident response to ensure system availability and integrity.
• Adhere to ITS standards and processes for supported systems.
• Configure and deploy virtual desktop systems, working with end users to determine requirements and specifications.
• Handle network connectivity and access configuration requests such as VPN, engaging ITS and cyber resources.
• Support interface and configuration for research projects, including data services and remote site co‑simulation.
• Support data handshake and connectivity for Digital Real‑Time Simulators, large dataset handling from internal, external or cloud repositories.
• Support research milestones and deadlines through dedicated support and implementation.
• Ensure network safety and security by administering required practices and approaches for research setups.

Relevant Bachelor's Degree with 5+ years of experience, or Master’s Degree with 3+ years, or PhD with equivalent experience. Must have strong leadership, project management, analytical, programming, design, and analytical skills; broad understanding of related IS disciplines.

• Active clearance or ability to obtain a DOE Q (or DoD TS) security clearance.
• DOE Q or TS clearance at DOE (Q) or DoD (TS) level.
• HSPD‑12 credential under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12.
• Thorough knowledge of supporting and operating Linux servers (RHEL 8+).
• Support on Linux desktop systems, troubleshooting and resolving end‑user issues.
• Thorough knowledge of supporting and operating Windows servers and endpoints (Windows 11).
• Availability for nights and weekends as needed.
• Excellent troubleshooting, communication, and customer service skills.
• Basic scripting skills using Bash, Power Shell, or Python.

• Knowledge of Rancher/Kubernetes and containerization.
• Experience with SLES 15+ and enterprise Linux distributions.
• Basic knowledge in IIS administration.
• Configuration and support of RSA appliances and tokens.
• Experience with F5 technologies as a web application firewall.
• Experience with AWS and Azure cloud services.
• Use of 0MQ brokering.
• Experience with VMware vSphere and vCenter.
• Support for PHP, Java, Tomcat, Apache, Git Hub, SVN, and related environments.
• Generating CSRs and…