Senior PKI Engineer ​/ SME Jobs

Senior PKI Engineer / SME

Location:

On-site at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB) Clearance:
Active TS Benefits:
Medical, Dental, Vision, Retirement and more What This Job Feels Like Work centers on designing and maintaining trust models that other systems depend on, often with little margin for error. Problems are rarely straightforward—solutions must account for vendor constraints, security requirements, and interoperability edge cases. Ownership of PKI architecture and implementation from policy design through operational support. High OPTEMPO; requires precision, persistence, and disciplined follow-through.

What You'll Do Design and manage PKI architectures, including root/intermediate hierarchies, chains of trust, and certificate lifecycle processes. Create and maintain segmented trust models (organizational partitions, cross-domain trust, constrained intermediates). Generate and support certificates for diverse use cases, including handling vendor-specific constraints and non-standard requirements (e.g., wildcard usage, SAN configurations, custom extensions). Troubleshoot certificate validation issues across systems, applications, and network boundaries.

Collaborate with systems, network, and application teams to ensure certificates function correctly within their environments. Define and enforce certificate policies, revocation strategies (CRL/OCSP), and security controls. Mentor engineers on PKI fundamentals and correct implementation practices.

Tech Knowledge / Skills PKI fundamentals: X.509, certificate chains, trust stores, key management Microsoft CA, OpenSSL, and other PKI tooling TLS/SSL, mutual authentication, certificate-based access control CRL, OCSP, revocation and lifecycle management Integration points: web servers, load balancers, applications, network devices Requirements 8+ years experience in PKI, security engineering, or related systems roles in secure/cleared environments Active TS; must be able to obtain TS/SCI Professional certification required;

expert-level capability preferred Demonstrated ability to design and troubleshoot PKI systems across multiple platforms and vendors Experience with complex trust models and real-world certificate interoperability challenges DoD 8140 compliance required The likely salary range for this position is $140,000-$220,000. This is not, however, a guarantee of compensation or salary. Rather, salary will be set based on experience, and contractual agreements and could fall outside of this range.