Systems Architect

Project Introduction

9th Way Insignia is looking for a Systems Architect to support the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Enterprise Acquisition Systems Support (EASS) program, leading the Operations & Maintenance (O&M) execution for the EASS eCMS portfolio. This role ensures the production environment remains stable, secure, and high-performing by coordinating day-to-day operational support, troubleshooting and resolution of incidents, disciplined change implementation, and continuous service improvement. The Systems Architect partners closely with engineering, security, and stakeholder teams to ensure enhancements are operationally supportable, deployments are executed predictably, and technical decisions prioritize reliability, maintainability, and mission continuity in a regulated federal environment.

Professional Level

The Systems Architect position aligns as an E2 (Engineer 2) at 9th Way Insignia. An Engineer 2 is a mid-level technical contributor who applies a strong foundation in engineering practices to execute work independently for defined problem areas, contributes to solution design, and supports delivery through clear documentation, sound technical judgment, and consistent follow-through. This level is expected to collaborate effectively across teams, communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, and improve operational outcomes by standardizing processes, strengthening controls, and driving practical improvements to reliability and performance.

Responsibilities

• Lead O&M execution for the EASS eCMS portfolio, ensuring service stability, responsiveness, and predictable support coverage for production operations.
• Establish and maintain operational standards for incident response, triage, escalation, troubleshooting, and resolution, including root cause analysis and corrective/preventive actions.
• Serve as the technical coordination point for production support activities, aligning engineering, security, and operations stakeholders on priorities, risks, and stabilization actions.
• Drive disciplined change implementation by coordinating operational readiness activities, validating deployment plans/runbooks, and ensuring changes are introduced safely with rollback planning and stakeholder communication.
• Define and maintain operational documentation, including runbooks, support procedures, configuration baselines, environment inventories, and knowledge articles to enable consistent support execution.
• Implement and monitor system health practices, including performance monitoring, capacity considerations, and proactive identification of issues affecting availability, latency, and reliability.
• Partner with security stakeholders to ensure O&M activities support security compliance, vulnerability remediation, and secure configuration practices across environments.
• Coordinate patching and routine maintenance activities, validating readiness, scheduling windows, tracking completion, and documenting outcomes for auditability and continuity.
• Support integration and interface stability by coordinating troubleshooting of cross-system issues, validating data flows, and ensuring operational dependencies are understood and managed.
• Provide technical input to planning and release activities to ensure enhancements are operationally supportable and aligned with sustainment priorities and service-level expectations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electronics Engineering, or other engineering/technical discipline and 5 years of relevant experience (or 8 additional years of relevant experience in lieu of the degree).
• Demonstrated experience leading or coordinating enterprise O&M efforts, including incident response, troubleshooting, stabilization, and service improvement in production environments.
• Experience implementing disciplined change practices (readiness, runbooks, controlled deployments, rollback planning, and post-deployment validation).
• Experience producing and maintaining operational documentation (runbooks, SOPs, system inventories/configuration records, and knowledge articles).
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, including the ability to coordinate across engineering, security, and customer stakeholders and drive issues to closure.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance at the Tier 2 (Moderate Risk) level (active preferred).

Preferred

• Prior experience supporting VA or other federal programs in regulated delivery environments.
• Experience supporting monitoring/observability practices and performance troubleshooting in multi-application enterprise environments.
• Experience contributing to solution design with a focus on maintainability, reliability, and operational supportability.