System Administrator – SME (Cloud, Hybrid)

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree and 10 years professional experience, or a Masters degree and 8 years professional experience, or an Associates degree and 12 years professional experience; or a high school diploma/equivalent and 14 years' professional experience.
• U.S. Citizenship required; must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance; all work must be performed within the United States
• Extensive experience in systems administration across hybrid IT environments (on-premises + cloud).
• VMware Virtualization: Demonstrated expertise administering vCenter, ESXi/vSphere (6.x/7.x/8.x), vROPS, and VMware Log Insight in large-scale enterprise environments.
• AWS Cloud Services: Hands-on experience with EC2, S3, CloudFormation, and workload migration tooling (e.g., Application Migration Service); ability to design, deploy, and maintain cloud infrastructure supporting production workloads.
• Windows & Linux/UNIX: Proficiency administering Windows Server (2016/2019/2022) and Linux/UNIX environments (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu) in enterprise or Federal settings.
• Enterprise Storage: Experience managing NAS, SAN, and enterprise hardware platforms from Dell, HP, NetApp, or comparable vendors.
• Backup & Disaster Recovery: Working knowledge of enterprise backup and replication solutions; experience designing or implementing Backup-to-Cloud and DR strategies.
• Multi-Cloud Environments: Familiarity with AWS, Azure, and GCP; ability to advise on workload placement, cost optimization, and architecture trade-offs.
• Identity & Access Management: Experience with Active Directory, Group Policy, PKI, and enterprise IAM.
• Zero-Downtime Operations: Demonstrated ability to perform zero-downtime upgrades, migrations, and hardware decommissions in production environments.
• Communication: Strong written and verbal skills; ability to produce technical documentation and present to technical peers and senior leadership.

Preferred Skills:

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or Enterprise Architecture or a related technical field is strongly preferred
• AWS Certification: AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional) or equivalent AWS certification.
• VMware Certification: VMware Certified Professional (VCP-DCV or VCP-VCF) or equivalent VMware certification.
• Kubernetes & Containers: Experience with Kubernetes (on-premises, AWS, or bare metal) and container orchestration for production workloads.
• DevOps Tooling: Jenkins (CI/CD), Ansible (configuration management/automation), or comparable pipeline tools.
• Monitoring Platforms: Datadog, Splunk, Elasticsearch, or VMware Log Insight for enterprise observability.
• PaaS Platforms: Exposure to Pivotal Cloud Foundry or comparable PaaS platforms in enterprise or multi-cloud environments.
• Federal/USGS Experience: Prior support of USGS, DOI, or other Federal OCIO environments; familiarity with CHS (Cloud Hosting Solutions) infrastructure.
• Agile/Scrum: Professional Scrum Master (PSM) or comparable Agile certification; experience working in sprint-based delivery models.
• AI/Cloud-Native Capabilities: AWS Certified AI Practitioner, Google Generative AI credentials, or hands-on experience with cloud-native AI/ML services.
• Oracle on Linux: Experience with Oracle databases on KVM/Red Hat Linux or comparable enterprise database infrastructure.
• Team Leadership: Experience leading or mentoring junior technical staff in a professional IT environment.

Peraton is seeking an experienced System Administrator – Subject Matter Expert (SME) specializing in cloud and hybrid computing environments to support the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). In this senior-level role, you will serve as a key technical advisor and hands-on administrator across a complex hybrid infrastructure spanning on-premises data center environments and multi-cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Work location: Remote

What You Will Do:

• Hybrid Systems Administration: Administer and maintain Windows Server and Linux/UNIX-based operating systems (Red Hat, Ubuntu, macOS, and comparable distributions) running on enterprise hardware including Dell, HP x86, and Oracle SPARC platforms across multiple physical data centers.
• Virtualization Management: Administer VMware vCloud, vSphere, vCenter, and Enterprise Plus virtualization environments; manage VMware Operations (vROPS) and Log Insight for performance monitoring, optimization, and troubleshooting; support System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) as needed.
• Cloud Administration & Optimization: Administer and optimize AWS environments (EC2, S3, CloudFormation, Application Migration Service, and related services); provide expert guidance on cloud and cluster computing architectures; research, evaluate, and deploy advanced cloud computing capabilities and large-data analytics solutions for the program.
• Migration & Modernization: Lead and support data integration and workload migration efforts from on-premises infrastructure to cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP); document migration paths, develop runbooks, and execute cutovers with minimal-to-no customer downtime.
• Storage & Backup/DR Administration: Administer NAS and SAN storage devices; manage enterprise backup software; implement and maintain Backup-to-Cloud replication and disaster recovery (DR) solutions to meet program continuity requirements.
• Architecture Advisory: Advise OCIO leadership and program stakeholders on cloud and hybrid computing architectures, system and memory management optimization across distributed platforms, and best practices for workload placement and resource utilization.
• Security & Patch Management: Apply OS, hypervisor, and application-level security patches to resolve vulnerabilities; maintain compliance with DOI/USGS security standards and Information Assurance Vulnerability Alert (IAVA) remediation timelines.
• Monitoring, Observability & Incident Response: Design and maintain operational monitoring dashboards (vROPS, Datadog, CloudWatch, or comparable tools) for CPU, memory, and storage utilization; troubleshoot and resolve performance and availability incidents across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure.
• DevOps & Automation Support: Leverage container and automation tooling (Kubernetes, Jenkins, Ansible, or comparable platforms) to support workload modernization, CI/CD pipeline operations, and infrastructure-as-code deployments.
• Documentation & Collaboration: Maintain accurate technical documentation including architecture diagrams, configuration records, migration plans, and runbooks; collaborate using Government-provided tools (Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Teams).