Senior Technical Solutions Architect

We are seeking a Senior or Principal Technical Solutions Architect to serve as the senior technical lead for our support of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) IT Centralization effort. NIH is consolidating commodity IT from its 27 Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs) into NIH Central IT on an aggressive timeline. Network, infrastructure, and help desk are the initial workstreams; end-user computing, identity and access, email and collaboration, hosting and cloud, cybersecurity operations, and enterprise software licensing follow in subsequent phases.

Candidate must be a U.S. Citizen and be able to obtain a Public Trust. This is a hybrid position and is required to be onsite 2-3 days per week in Bethesda, Maryland.

What You Will Do:

Key Responsibilities

• Lead technical discovery and assessment. Engage NIH central IT, Institutes and Centers, incumbent providers, and technical teams to understand current services, architectures, technologies, operating practices, and mission requirements. Build on assessments and decisions already completed, validate available information, and investigate material gaps.

• Provide technical leadership across commodity IT workstreams. Evaluate consolidation approaches across multiple technology domains, identify cross-workstream dependencies, and help ensure individual transition plans support a coherent enterprise operating environment.

• Drive technical working sessions and decisions. Lead discussions that uncover requirements, clarify constraints, resolve technical disagreements, and advance decisions. Constructively challenge assumptions and vendor recommendations using technical evidence and operational considerations.

• Understand local requirements and challenges. Work directly with Institute and Center technical personnel to identify service needs, specialized dependencies, operational constraints, and barriers to centralization. Distinguish common enterprise requirements from mission-specific needs requiring further evaluation or exceptions.

• Assess target architectures and service models. Review proposed centralized solutions for feasibility, scalability, resilience, security, supportability, and alignment with mission needs. Recommend practical options and explain their costs, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs.

• Determine centralized operational readiness. Assess whether receiving organizations have the capacity, staffing, skills, tools, access, documentation, monitoring, and support processes necessary to accept and sustain transferred services.

• Translate technical findings into project plans. Work with program and project managers to define activities, prerequisites, milestones, resource needs, accountable teams, acceptance criteria, and dependencies. Provide technical inputs that make schedules realistic and executable.

• Develop transition and migration approaches. Recommend service groupings, migration waves, pilots, testing, cutover procedures, rollback strategies, and stabilization activities. Identify opportunities to accelerate progress without creating unacceptable operational risks.

• Define service ownership and support arrangements. Help establish responsibilities between central IT, Institutes and Centers, vendors, and other stakeholders. Address service boundaries, escalation paths, support tiers, service levels, knowledge transfer, and retained local responsibilities.

• Identify and resolve technical risks and issues. Investigate incomplete inventories, undocumented dependencies, incompatible technologies, fragmented tools, unclear ownership, licensing constraints, and other obstacles. Recommend mitigations and elevate decisions requiring government direction.

• Protect mission continuity. Evaluate the impact of consolidation on research, scientific, clinical, and administrative activities. Identify requirements for specialized handling, phased transitions, or continued local capabilities.

• Produce clear technical deliverables. Develop assessments, architecture and dependency diagrams, requirements summaries, options analyses, technical roadmaps, readiness checklists, decision records, and leadership briefings.

What You Need :

• At least 15 years of progressive experience in enterprise IT engineering, operations, or architecture, including substantial experience as a senior technical lead or architect.
• Demonstrated experience leading the technical assessment, planning, and execution of large-scale IT consolidation, centralization, or shared services efforts spanning multiple interdependent services, organizational units, locations, or vendors.
• Deep technical expertise in one or more core infrastructure domains, with broad working knowledge across enterprise commodity IT. This includes networking, data center and hybrid cloud, identity and directory services (Active Directory, Entra ID), end-user computing and service desk, email and collaboration (Microsoft 365), cybersecurity operations, and software asset management.
• Strong understanding of the dependencies among networking, compute, storage, cloud services, identity, endpoints, enterprise platforms, security controls, and support operations.
• Ability to examine technical designs, configurations, inventories, service workflows, and operational procedures directly with engineers and administrators.
• Experience evaluating target environments for operational readiness, and developing migration strategies, transition plans, technical acceptance criteria, and operational handoff requirements.
• Ability to turn incomplete, inconsistent, or conflicting information into documented requirements, risks, recommendations, and sequenced activities.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical discussions and influence decisions across teams with different priorities and reporting structures.
• Strong judgment under tight deadlines, including the ability to distinguish essential transition requirements from improvements that can follow consolidation.
• Excellent written, verbal, analytical, and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with engineers, program managers, and senior government leaders.
• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust.

Nice To Have:

• Experience supporting NIH, HHS, or another federated federal agency with semi-autonomous components. Familiarity with FITARA, OMB commodity IT categories, and Technology Business Management (TBM) cost models.
• Experience with ITIL-based service management and consolidated service desk operations.
• Hands-on experience with Cisco (Catalyst, Nexus, ISE), Palo Alto firewalls, F5, Microsoft 365/Entra ID, VMware/Hyper-V, AWS or Azure, and ServiceNow.
• Experience with IPv6 transition (OMB M-21-07) and Zero Trust implementation planning.
• One or more relevant certifications, such as CCNP/CCIE, CISSP, TOGAF, ITIL v4, AWS or Azure Solutions Architect, or PMP.

Salary:

$180,000 - $220,000 annual salary

Work Location

Bethesda, MD area / hybrid

What We Offer:

iVision Consulting (iVision) offers competitive compensation and a flexible benefits package that reflects our commitment to creating a diverse and supportive workplace. Our benefits include: Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance; Paid Time Off (PTO); Company Holidays (aligns with Federal holidays); 401(k) Retirement Plan; Personal Development & Learning Opportunities; Employee Referral Program; Corporate Events & Community Outreach.