Senior Systems Engineer

Compass is looking for a motivated individual to provide operational services to the Intelligence Community.Our goal is to hire talented and passionate team members who desire to grow their skill sets, as well as the reputation of the company with our partners, clients, and stakeholders. We are looking for an individual to join an innovative team supporting mission critical/mission essential activities. Professional IT certification training opportunities and assistance are available through Compass.

This position is contingent upon task order award.

Position Title: Senior Systems Engineer #2060
Location: Chantilly, Virginia
Clearance Required: Active Top Secret/SCI

Overall Assignment Description:

The Senior Systems Engineer will support the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Ground Enterprise Directorate (GED) approach to Systems Engineering (SE) and SE Management and abide by and support GED's Test and Evaluation Management Plan (TEMP) and Systems Engineering Plan (SEP) and recommend improvements. The Senior Systems Engineer will provide ground mission expertise to support system engineering of ground capabilities.

Duties may include:

• Architecture
  • Support the development, maintenance, management, and implementation of GED architectures.
  • Support architectural endeavors aligning with GED's Ground Vision.
  • Provide recommendations/technical expertise for cloud architecture evolution and end-to-end integration of data-centric applications and distributed networks, enabling information sharing, efficiencies, and interoperability. This includes:
    • Operating in a hybrid cloud (on prem hardware with cloud)
    • Multiple cloud architecture supporting 2 or more different cloud service providers
    • Architecture resiliency with or without cloud service accessibility
    • Managed services using any cloud provider
  • Ensure Special Program Office (SPO) infrastructure, frameworks, prototypes, and platforms (to include mission unique environments) align with GED's Ground Vision and architectures.
  • Develop, document, maintain, and coordinate ground architectures, consistent with the following activities:
    • Identification and recommendation of architectural improvements/opportunities for both current and future ground architectures maximizing GED enterprise services and tools as legacy systems are modernized and support new mission requirements/architectures are proposed;
    • Enable automation, data centricity, application service-centric concepts, hybrid/multi-cloud environments, software frameworks, microservices, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines;
    • Evaluation of GED, NRO, and Intelligence Community (IC) architectures to identify opportunities to integrate/consolidate functions, capabilities, frameworks, platforms, and architectures;
    • Development and maintenance of hybrid multi-cloud reference architectures and design patterns;
    • Integration of resilient and isolated architectures supporting mission scenarios;
    • Identification, assessment, and documentation of dependencies, discrepancies, and gaps in capabilities between current and planned future ground architectures;
    • Participation in and support of NRO/Systems Engineering Directorate's (SED), NRO CIO/CISO, and other agencies' architectural forums and development efforts, where applicable;
    • Supporting development and monitoring adherence to GED-level and SPO-level architectural standards that align with overarching Federal, IC, and DoD architectures; and
    • Creation and maintenance of architectural views, based on architectural frameworks as directed by the Government.

• Requirements Management
  • Requirements management activities will include management of traditionally developed System and Function Requirements, Interface Documents, Systems Design Specs, Agile requirements (Epics, Features, Stories) and other types of requirements, capability requests, and needs as provided by users and external sources.
  • Support the development, maintenance, and management of requirements for GED programs that could include programs that are managed via both Agile and Waterfall methodologies.
  • Develop and maintain GED requirements, traceability, and verification in Government approved tool(s), e.g., JIRA, Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements System (DOORS), Excel, and Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools.

• Roadmap and Schedule Management
  • Support the development, evaluation, communication, and use of roadmaps and schedules.
  • Abide by and support the SPO and GED schedule management process.

• Readiness, Test, Verification and Validation
  • Prepare readiness artifacts in accordance with NRO Instruction (NI) 130-1-6 NRO Life Cycle Readiness and associated addendums and Agile Blueprint.
  • Support the execution of GED's System and Ground Readiness Process, e.g., Ground Readiness Review (GRR).
  • Support, facilitate, and participate in site surveys, pre-ship reviews, and audit reviews.
  • Support the planning and execution of SPO-level, multi-project (solution/system), and end-to-end integration, test, verification, and validation activities.
  • Witness test events, provide test satisfaction recommendations, and prepare test reports for SPO-level projects.
  • Work with stakeholders to monitor and provide assessments of development and integration test data sets, to ensure current, relevant data is used for various types of system evaluation.
  • Facilitate and monitor the end-to-end integration and interoperability of the developed baseline systems.
  • Evaluate and coordinate FGA readiness actions and report on comprehensive closure of required capabilities.

• Transition of Capabilities
  • Support the transition management process (e.g., NSIS) and engage with developers, acquisition offices, and stakeholders to coordinate delivery of operational capabilities.
  • Ensure proposed capability transitions are in compliance with ground architectures.
  • Support the planning, coordination, and completion of the decommissioning of projects.

• Configuration Management
  • Support the Government in conducting SPO-level ERBs and Configuration Control Boards.
  • Write, review, and recommend responses to Requests for Changes (RFCs) and Change Requests for SPO-level projects to include developer RFC impact statements.

• Risk, Issues, and Opportunities Management
  • Abide by and facilitate SPO-level risk/issue/opportunity management processes by:
    • Supporting the GED Risk Forum
    • Identifying GED enterprise (cross-SPO) and SPO-level risks/issues/opportunities
    • Developing and assessing risks, issues, and opportunities for GED programs and systems to include the risks/issues/opportunities statements and mitigation strategies and coordinating with the appropriate stakeholders.

• Thread Management
  • Support GED's thread management to align and synchronize acquisitions, planning, and support architecture and requirements analyses and trade studies.
  • Develop, propose, collect, and report metrics to monitor acquisition implementations, synchronization, and to track SPO-level and cross-SPO baseline execution.
  • Support the thread leads' increment planning events and solution demonstrations by:
    • Providing SPO inputs to the thread architecture views and roadmaps;
    • Assessing and reporting SPO inputs to the thread's development status;
    • Evaluating risks and issues and recommending mitigation options;
    • Providing SPO input to planning efforts and program reviews;
    • Verifying that major mission and thread capabilities are addressed in requirements.

• Digital Engineering
  • Support the use of Digital Engineering (DE), to include the use of Model Based Systems Engineering and other DE disciplines to support systems engineering and acquisition practices.
  • Support the integration of a common environment consistent with select architecture models, such as the MBSE model.
  • Assess architecture alternatives via modeling to demonstrate measurable outcomes and impacts to enable SPO-level decision-making.
  • Use modeling and visualization capabilities to compare architecture alternatives and evaluate changes to 1) current and future architectures, 2) CONOPs, 3) proposed systems, 4) potential capabilities, 5) prototypes, and 6) new requirements.
  • Support coordination with Chief Architect (CA) to ensure activities are aligned with GED-level Systems Engineering guidance for FGA 2.0 and 3.0 activities.

• Research and Development
  • Support prototyping, innovation, and exploration of new ways to provide advanced mission management, processing, and orchestration capabilities.
  • Support research and development. This does not include performing research and development.

• Outreach
  • Support the preparation and presentation of strategic planning products (e.g., the ground vision, strategic initiatives and ground architecture status) at GED- and SPO-level events.
  • Support the use of GED enterprise managed knowledge repositories for discovering and sharing information to include GED policy, directives, acquisition guidance, and terminology, as well as all reports, studies, and milestone activities.
  • Make recommendations, develop plans, and execute Government-approved outreach activities and TEMs with oversight organizations, NRO directorates, mission partners, users, industry partners, FFRDCs and national labs to:
    • Facilitate open communications;
    • Identify mission needs, technical issues, and potential resolutions;
    • Communicate the value proposition of SPO capabilities and services;
    • Promote user engagement with stakeholders and product consumers;
    • Assess new technologies/capabilities.

Skills and Experience:

Required:

• Requires a Technical Degree and 10 to 12 years of experience with a BS/BA; or 8 to 10 years with a MS/MA; or 5 to 7 years with a PhD
• Must possess and be able to maintain TS/SCI with Poly
• Intelligence Community experience and work history
• Experience developing technical architecture solutions
• Knowledge of intelligence collection methods, capabilities, and tasking processes
• Experience in supporting Requirements Engineering, CONOPS development, and system integration to accommodate End to End Systems Engineering
• Experience/Certifications with Model Base Systems Engineering software
• Strong project management skills and ability to concisely brief project status to senior leadership
• Apply Agile principles to management of a government/contractor development team working disparate projects
• Expected to create/brief packages which include technical requirements, implementation plan, risks and success criteria
• Knowledge of, and experience executing, SAFe Agile methodology
• Excellent communication skills, multi-task and lead several projects simultaneously

Compass, Inc. (Compass) is a Small Business (SB) headquartered in Winchester, VA as a Defense and Intelligence solutions provider to the United States Government. We provide Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA), Advisory and Assistance Services (A&AS), and Systems Engineering and Integration (SE&I) to our government and business partner customers. As a premier Defense and Intelligence solution provider, we employee a diverse, agile, highly trained and extremely talented staff.

Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Veterans/Disabled