Storage Engineer

Storage Engineer - Top Secret/SCI
Bethesda, Maryland
Location: Bethesda, MD
$107,000-$130,000


Category: Systems Engineer

Travel Required: No

Remote Type: Hybrid

Clearance: Top Secret/SCI


This role requires technical expertise in storage engineering, system administration, and operations. This role is responsible for optimising the configuration of the enterprise storage infrastructure to maximise availability, performance, and capacity. This role participates in the life cycle process of purchasing, installing, maintaining, and replacing storage devices across on-premise and cloud IT environments. This role collects and evaluates metrics to optimize storage operations. This individual identifies risks, performs assessments, and analyses risk mitigation strategies. Finally, this individual is responsible for developing and maintaining system documentation and procedures in accordance with customer requirements. The Customer utilises an Agile Framework to plan and successfully complete all initiatives


This is a 100% on-site position. All work must be performed at the customer site.

Primary Responsibilities

Systems Engineering / Architecture / Life cycle Design

Design and engineer scalable enterprise storage architectures supporting performance, resiliency, high availability, and mission growth requirements across on-premise and cloud environments.
Develop logical and physical storage architectures, reference designs, and engineering road maps aligned to customer mission requirements and future capacity demands.
Perform systems design and engineering analysis for storage modernisation initiatives, including solution trade studies, technology evaluations, and engineering recommendations.
Engineer life cycle replacement strategies for enterprise storage infrastructure, balancing risk, obsolescence, cost, and operational continuity.
Develop and maintain engineering artifacts including architecture diagrams, low-level designs, interface documentation, data flow mappings, and implementation plans.
Apply systems engineering principles to storage integration, interoperability, performance optimization, and infrastructure resilience.
Perform engineering analysis of system dependencies, failure modes, and technical risks; develop mitigation strategies to improve reliability and supportability.


Advanced Engineering / Design Responsibilities

Engineer and optimize storage solutions for multi-petabyte environments supporting virtualization, GPU/compute-intensive workloads, and mission-critical applications.
Provide engineering support for performance modelling, capacity forecasting, and lifecycle planning using operational metrics and trend analysis.
Contribute to disaster recovery architecture, data protection engineering, and continuity solution design for enterprise storage services.
Experience with systems engineering life cycle methodologies, including requirements development, systems design, architecture, integration, testing, sustainment, and life cycle refresh.
Demonstrated knowledge of storage systems architecture, life cycle engineering, and infrastructure modernization principles.
Familiarity with model-based or traditional systems engineering disciplines, architecture frameworks, and engineering documentation practices preferred.
Install, configure, and administer enterprise storage systems from multiple vendors to include, but not limited to, Dell EMC and Quantum
Install, configure, and administer Rubrik server and client software. Schedule and monitor backup policies. Generate backup status reports as required
Administer Cisco Brocade fiber channel switch fabrics. Configure single initiator zone sets and monitor switch utilization and performance
Create and secure SMB file shares
Coordinate with server administrators to create, secure, and mount NFS exports
Develop and implement Disaster Recovery and Continuity of Operations plans in accordance with customer requirements
Install, configure, maintain, and administer Linux and Windows servers in support of storage operations such as Rubrik, Media, DSM and Master servers
Build capacity management dashboards that improve visibility into enterprise storage use, health, resilience, and provide ongoing resources for planning for enterprise infrastructure life cycle replacement
Configure Rubrik policies. Troubleshoot and resolve backup job failures
Coordinate with vCenter administrators to provision Storage Area Network (SAN) resources to VMWare ESX cluster datastores as required
Configure and manage volume snapshots. Assist customers with point-in-time file restores
Schedule and monitor volume replication for disaster recovery
Monitor health and availability of infrastructure applications and systems
Work with vendors to troubleshoot and resolve hardware and software failures
Coordinate with Change Management to deconflict and schedule hardware maintenance activities, system and firmware updates, and other configuration changes
Execute system changes during scheduled maintenance windows
Monitor and evaluate system performance and capacity trends
Resolve tier 2 and tier 3 service requests
Identify opportunities to automate operations. Develop automated solutions that take advantage of Dell and NetApp system APIs
Seek opportunities for continuous improvement to support effective and efficient operations
Work with Cloud Storage solutions as needed for Cloud applications
Work independently with minimal supervision
Mentor junior team members


Basic Qualifications

Requires a Bachelor's degree and 8+ years of relevant experience, or Masters degree with 6+ years of experience. Additional years of relevant experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
Experience administering enterprise-level data storage systems (Dell Storage Center, Dell Compellent, and Data Domain preferred) with a demonstrated understanding of the following services and technologies:
SAN administration including provisioning of LUNs, managing fibre channel zoning, and mapping storage to servers
NAS administration including NFS and SMB file sharing
Integration with VMWare ESX Server
Data migration strategies
Snapshots
Volume replication
Managing file and share permissions in an Active Directory environment
Storage monitoring and performance tuning
Understanding of Cloud storage management
Experience managing and administering Veritas Rubrik
Experience with scripting technologies such as PowerShell
Working knowledge of Unix or Linux based operating systems
Working knowledge of Distributed File System (DFS)
Excellent communication skills
Ability to complete complex projects with minimal direction
Experience working independently to support a 24/7/365 customer environment
Experience contributing to deliverables and meeting performance metrics
Experience coordinating with senior management and customers
Candidate must, at a minimum, meet DoD 8140/8570.11- IAT Level II certification requirements (Security+ CE, CCNA-Security, GICSP, GSEC, or SSCP along with an appropriate computing environment (CE) certification). An IAT Level III certification would also be acceptable (CASP+, CCNP Security, CISA, CISSP, GCED, GCIH, CCSP).


Security Clearance

Due to the nature of the government contracts we support, ship is required.
TS/SCI Poly is required for position or a TS/SCI and willingness to obtain a Poly.


Preferred Qualifications

Experience with Disaster Recovery and COOP storage backup and recovery within and across the data centers and the Cloud
Ability to analyze cloud migration approaches to support customer decision making for effective and efficient cloud migrations
Experience managing Distributed File System (DFS) namespaces