Principal System Architect / SME

Accountabilities:

• Lead and technically supervise senior systems architects and engineers, providing daily direction, mentorship, and technical guidance.
• Support workload coordination and staffing decisions by advising project leadership on team priorities and resource allocation.
• Shape and support enterprise PQC migration strategies aligned with NIST post-quantum standards and CNSA 2.0 requirements.
• Lead cryptographic inventory and discovery activities to identify systems, protocols, data stores, and dependencies exposed to quantum-related risks, including “harvest now, decrypt later” threats.
• Establish crypto-agility standards and advise on hybrid classical/PQC approaches that enable secure migration with minimal re-architecture.
• Evaluate PQC algorithms such as ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA against enterprise use cases, performance requirements, and technical constraints.
• Develop cybersecurity architecture requirements with federal stakeholders and translate business, mission, and security needs into actionable technical requirements.
• Design enterprise architectures spanning software, hardware, communications, networking, and cybersecurity capabilities while anticipating future interfaces and cross-functional requirements.
• Design, implement, baseline, validate, and verify enterprise cybersecurity capability configurations and ongoing changes.
• Develop security policies aligned with NIST standards, CISA maturity models, Zero Trust principles, and applicable federal and industry requirements.
• Foster collaboration across government and contractor teams to establish practical paths forward across complex technical workstreams.
• Prepare briefings, presentations, and written deliverables that communicate program status, risks, progress, security outcomes, and value to technical and executive stakeholders.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of systems architecture experience, including technical supervision and direction of senior architects and engineering staff.
• Active CISSP or CISM certification.
• Proven experience designing and implementing enterprise cybersecurity architectures and capabilities.
• Experience developing cybersecurity architecture requirements collaboratively with customers and stakeholders.
• Experience baselining enterprise cybersecurity configurations and validating and verifying implementations and ongoing configuration changes.
• Experience developing policies aligned with CISA maturity models, NIST standards, and federal cybersecurity requirements.
• Strong knowledge of PKI, key management, and certificate lifecycle management.
• Deep understanding of PQC standards, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), SLH-DSA (FIPS 205), CNSA 2.0, and related transition requirements.
• Knowledge of crypto-agility, hybrid cryptographic implementations, enterprise cryptography, network security, and secure communications.
• Experience with enterprise network architecture, including segmentation, routing, secure transport protocols, IAM, directory services, load balancers, firewalls, and HSMs.
• Knowledge of cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud security architectures, including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, cloud key management, shared responsibility models, and FedRAMP requirements.
• Ability to translate complex technical, policy, and mission requirements into clear architecture decisions, actionable processes, and prioritized tasks.
• Strong leadership, collaboration, communication, and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to explain complex technical subjects to both technical and executive audiences.
• Experience with PQC architecture, cryptographic inventories, “harvest now, decrypt later” risk assessments, hybrid key exchange, automated discovery tools, or Cryptographic Bills of Materials (CBOMs) is highly desirable.
• Familiarity with FIPS 140-3, HSMs, federal PQC guidance, Zero Trust architecture, and federal cloud environments such as AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, or Google Cloud for Government is a plus.
• PMP, CCSP, AWS Security Specialty, Azure Security Engineer, or similar certifications are beneficial.
• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field is beneficial.
• Must be a U.S. citizen in compliance with federal contract requirements.

Benefits:

• Fully remote position, with the role based in the United States and noted as remote from Herndon, Virginia.
• 144 hours of paid time off (PTO).
• 11 paid holidays.
• Healthcare coverage with approximately 85% of insurance premiums covered.
• 401(k) retirement plan.
• Continuing education opportunities.
• Certification maintenance and reimbursement.
• Opportunities for technical and professional development within a cybersecurity-focused environment.
• Collaborative culture supporting creativity, accountability, critical thinking, and mission success.