Senior Windows Systems Engineer

Job Title: Senior Windows Systems Engineer
Location: Washington, DC
Type: 6+ months contract - good chance to extend
Work Model: Washington, DC (Hybrid) Onsite approximately 2x per week - Work primarily REMOTE with the need to support on site as needed to meet the needs of the program
Security Clearance: Must be able to obtain a Public Trust clearance
As the Senior Windows Systems Engineer supporting a federal client, you will provide senior technical support for the agency's Windows platform. You will design, engineer, configure, deploy, maintain, monitor, and modernize Windows components and environment within the FTC IT infrastructure. Support program operations and maintenance activities. Will set the standards the rest of the team builds to and serve as an escalation point when an issue exceeds Tier 1 and Tier 2 support.

This is a hands-on engineering role with design ownership: you will contribute to how the platform is built, hardened, automated, recovered, and maintained. You will mentor the administrators who operate it day to day.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, or a related technical field, and eight (8) or more years of progressive Windows Administration and engineering experience OR Master's degree in a related field and at least 6 years of relevant experience in above areas. Equivalent additional experience may substitute for the degree.
• A minimum of six (6) years of experience in cloud operations, engineering, or related field.
• A minimum of three (3) years performing at a senior and lead level with design and architecture ownership for an enterprise Windows environment.
• Familiarity with federal compliance (NIST, FISMA, FedRAMP) and CIS 4.0 controls.
• Experience designing, operating and maintaining Microsoft Azure environments to include Zero Trust, hybrid cloud, and cross-domain architectures in mission environments.
• Expertise in Microsoft Azure architecture, Microsoft Entra  on-prem interoperability.
• Experience with Azure Monitor and cost optimization strategies.
• Experience with the configuration, deployment, and management of Microsoft Entra  / Azure AD for centralized identity, single sign-on (SSO), and role-based access control (RBAC) across Azure tenants and subscriptions.
• Demonstrated experience with the integration of federated identity solutions with AWS Identity Center, Entra, or on-premises Active Directory.
• Develop and enforce Azure governance frameworks, including Azure Policy, Management Groups, and Blueprints, ensuring alignment with DoD Zero Trust and least-privilege principles.
• Familiarity with orchestration tools like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet for configuration management and ability to implement Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines for cloud infrastructure provisioning and deployment automation.
• Ability to script in one more of the following computer languages Python, Bash, Visual Basic or Power Shell.
• Understanding of federated identity, modern authentication protocols (SAML, OIDC, OAuth 2.0), and cross-cloud authentication mechanisms.
• Hands on experience with and knowledge of networking concepts (DNS, VPNs, load balancers, etc.) and cloud-based networking configurations.
• Configure, maintain and upgrade 2019, 2022, & 2025 servers operating systems by performing system administration tasks related to:
  • Microsoft Application installation and maintenance
  • 3rd Party software installation and maintenance
• Configure, maintain and upgrade physical and virtual server installations in FTC datacenters, to include:
  • OS installation and configuration
  • Out of Band management configuration (iLO, etc.)
  • Hardware installation/maintenance (network adapter, memory, hard drives, etc.)
  • RAID Configuration
  • Network adapter configuration
  • SCSI and Fiber Channel configuration
• Experience and ability to immediately contribute to Automation Tasks and Infrastructure-as-Code tools and templates.
• Provide experience designing, deploying, and maintaining Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) / PKI environments.
• Applied knowledge of system security engineering, including CIS and STIG hardening, vulnerability management, and federal compliance frameworks (FISMA, NIST SP 800-53).
• Extensive experience with Visio or other networking diagram tools and solid understanding of Networking principles.
• Excellent troubleshooting skills with the ability to resolve complex technical issues in a timely manner.
• Strong problem-solving skills and…