Principal Systems Engineer #5480
Contributes to the section's work effort in responding to incidents from other sections, including the help desk. Supports tasks which may include helping to develop standard operating procedures, assignments, and coordination of work efforts to address issues. Assists users with computer needs such as installing and configuring software/hardware on their PC; troubleshoots problems with user systems. Provisions new accounts for users. Supports the section's work effort to develop processes and procedures to streamline the resolution of issues. Provides technical support for Senate information technology or telecommunications services, systems, hardware, software, and storage solutions to the users; supports Senate offices, contract support vendors, and other technical staff in troubleshooting and managing the various Senate environments. Maintains and monitors LAN/WAN and SAN operations and solves LAN/WAN and SAN applications problems; installs integrates, customizes, enhances, troubleshoots, and tests LAN and SAN hardware and software. Assists in installing, upgrading, customizing, tuning, and maintaining databases for optimal performance and availability; assists in developing, testing, and implementing database store procedures, functions, triggers, views, and packages. Conducts acceptance and integration testing; assists vendor systems implementation by troubleshooting related system issues affecting Senate users. Analyzes, designs, develops, implements, and maintains applications to meet the needs of Senate users; assists with product evaluations and implementation. Attends internal training provided by subject matter experts to understand operational tasks, documents support needs, and share the information within the assigned section. Other duties as assigned.
Requirements
Conditions of Employment
- For conditions of employment and citizenship requirements, please visit the job announcement on the United States Senate Career Page at https://sen.gov/J5NY.
Qualifications
Other Duties/ Responsibilities
- Participate in on-site and on-call rotation.
Required Work Experience
- Eight to ten years of relevant work experience (GED), six to eight years (Associates), four to six years (Bachelor’s), two to four years (Master’s).
Required Special Skills/ Knowledge
- Provides long-range strategic planning activities for the Senate in the areas of information technology or telecommunications hardware, software, storage solutions, and networking systems; monitors the impact of technological developments; identifies emerging technologies.
- Provides expert-level technical support on Senate hardware, software, storage solutions, and network systems to vendors, other technical staff, and other divisions and departments; resolves critical and complex systems, applications, storage or communications performance problems.
- Serves as project manager on assigned projects; plans, assigns, directs and coordinates work efforts; develops project plans, timetables and staff assignments.
- Customizes, tests, recommends and configures operating and network systems and software platforms; monitors, evaluates and resolves hardware/software configuration system performance problems; recommends third party software on other operating systems.
As part of our hiring process, we may conduct a skills assessment to better understand an applicant’s proficiency in key areas relevant to the role.
Desired Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or eight to ten (10) years of relevant experience in system administration, database administration, network engineering, software engineering, software development, or in Cybersecurity.
- Manage multi-stage pipelines for build, test, and deploy processes, ensuring reliable and fast delivery of applications.
- Set up real-time alerting for failed jobs, builds and databases, ensuring quick resolution of incidents in production or pre-production environments.
- Ability to install, configure, and maintain at least one of MSSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB in production, development, and staging environments.
- Knowledge of optimizing database performance by configuring indexes, managing query efficiency, and tuning the database for workload-specific performance. This includes memory management, cache optimization, and monitoring tools like Ops Manager to proactively address performance bottlenecks.
- Ability to configure and implement proactive monitoring, alerting and performance tools, e.g. PGMonitor, Ops Manager or similar.
- Design and maintain a Disaster Recovery architecture utilizing replication over a WAN for MySQL and PostgreSQL.
- Working knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) Syntax, including the ability to manage the data within a PostgreSQL or MySQL database.
- Knowledge of setting up backup and recovery strategies for seamless customer support.
- Experience of databases in cloud environments, ensuring backups and scaling are automated is a plus.
- Scripting and development skills (Ansible, Bash, Python, and PowerShell).
Working Conditions
- The U.S. Senate network cannot be taken offline for maintenance during the workday, or while the Senate is in session. As such, maintenance windows may only occur at night, on weekends, and occasionally on holidays. Employees who perform systems upgrades, maintenance, wiring, backups, support our alternate data centers will have schedules that include working nights, weekends, and holidays.
Security Clearance
- This position requires that the applicant obtain and maintain a Secret U.S. Government security clearance.
- Applicants must be U.S. citizens in order for the SAA to submit your application for a security clearance.
Education
High School Diploma, GED or an equivalent combination of education and work experience.
Additional information
The Sergeant at Arms is an equal opportunity employer in accordance with the requirements of Senate rules, regulations, and applicable Federal Laws. This agency provides reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process, please notify the agency. Decisions to grant reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case-by-case basis. Please email [email protected] with “Applicant Accommodation” in the subject line. No moving, relocation or pre-employment travel expenses will be paid for this position, or while in application for this position.
- Benefits
A career with the U.S. government provides employees with a comprehensive benefits package. As a federal employee, you and your family will have access to a range of benefits that are designed to make your federal career very rewarding. .
Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold and whether your position is full-time, part-time or intermittent. Contact the hiring agency for more information on the specific benefits offered.
Conditions of Employment
- For conditions of employment and citizenship requirements, please visit the job announcement on the United States Senate Career Page at https://sen.gov/J5NY.
Qualifications
Other Duties/ Responsibilities
- Participate in on-site and on-call rotation.
Required Work Experience
- Eight to ten years of relevant work experience (GED), six to eight years (Associates), four to six years (Bachelor’s), two to four years (Master’s).
Required Special Skills/ Knowledge
- Provides long-range strategic planning activities for the Senate in the areas of information technology or telecommunications hardware, software, storage solutions, and networking systems; monitors the impact of technological developments; identifies emerging technologies.
- Provides expert-level technical support on Senate hardware, software, storage solutions, and network systems to vendors, other technical staff, and other divisions and departments; resolves critical and complex systems, applications, storage or communications performance problems.
- Serves as project manager on assigned projects; plans, assigns, directs and coordinates work efforts; develops project plans, timetables and staff assignments.
- Customizes, tests, recommends and configures operating and network systems and software platforms; monitors, evaluates and resolves hardware/software configuration system performance problems; recommends third party software on other operating systems.
As part of our hiring process, we may conduct a skills assessment to better understand an applicant’s proficiency in key areas relevant to the role.
Desired Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or eight to ten (10) years of relevant experience in system administration, database administration, network engineering, software engineering, software development, or in Cybersecurity.
- Manage multi-stage pipelines for build, test, and deploy processes, ensuring reliable and fast delivery of applications.
- Set up real-time alerting for failed jobs, builds and databases, ensuring quick resolution of incidents in production or pre-production environments.
- Ability to install, configure, and maintain at least one of MSSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB in production, development, and staging environments.
- Knowledge of optimizing database performance by configuring indexes, managing query efficiency, and tuning the database for workload-specific performance. This includes memory management, cache optimization, and monitoring tools like Ops Manager to proactively address performance bottlenecks.
- Ability to configure and implement proactive monitoring, alerting and performance tools, e.g. PGMonitor, Ops Manager or similar.
- Design and maintain a Disaster Recovery architecture utilizing replication over a WAN for MySQL and PostgreSQL.
- Working knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) Syntax, including the ability to manage the data within a PostgreSQL or MySQL database.
- Knowledge of setting up backup and recovery strategies for seamless customer support.
- Experience of databases in cloud environments, ensuring backups and scaling are automated is a plus.
- Scripting and development skills (Ansible, Bash, Python, and PowerShell).
Working Conditions
- The U.S. Senate network cannot be taken offline for maintenance during the workday, or while the Senate is in session. As such, maintenance windows may only occur at night, on weekends, and occasionally on holidays. Employees who perform systems upgrades, maintenance, wiring, backups, support our alternate data centers will have schedules that include working nights, weekends, and holidays.
Security Clearance
- This position requires that the applicant obtain and maintain a Secret U.S. Government security clearance.
- Applicants must be U.S. citizens in order for the SAA to submit your application for a security clearance.
Education
High School Diploma, GED or an equivalent combination of education and work experience.
Additional information
The Sergeant at Arms is an equal opportunity employer in accordance with the requirements of Senate rules, regulations, and applicable Federal Laws. This agency provides reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process, please notify the agency. Decisions to grant reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case-by-case basis. Please email [email protected] with “Applicant Accommodation” in the subject line. No moving, relocation or pre-employment travel expenses will be paid for this position, or while in application for this position.