SR. SYSTEMS ENGINEER PRINCIPAL (HPC/AI System Administrator, Multi-discipline Expert)
General Dynamics Information Technology · Fairfax, VA
$136,000–$184,000from the description
Jul 22, 2026
Fairfax, VA
Jul 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior-level role supporting the supercomputing infrastructure behind NOAA's National Weather Service operational forecasting. Day-to-day work centers on keeping large-scale HPC systems running around the clock — managing schedulers such as PBS Pro or Slurm, tuning system performance, troubleshooting multi-node environments, and scripting in Bash, Python, or Perl. Suits an experienced Linux and HPC administrator comfortable with on-call responsibilities and 24/7 operational demands.
Senior level · 8+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 70 people in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (network and computer systems administrators). range 15–120
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $128,188 (middle half $100,819–$156,589). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
The job title is 'Systems Engineer Principal' and the req header lists '15+ years of related experience', but the body of the JD gates on only '8+ years of related experience'. The lower, explicitly stated gate (8 years) is used for the overall years minimum; the header figure appears to be a staffing-system field that does not match the actual posting requirements.
The role sits at the boundary between systems/HPC operations (15-1244) and software/infrastructure engineering (15-1252). The primary day-to-day work is operating and sustaining large-scale HPC supercomputing systems for NOAA NWS — scheduling, system administration, performance monitoring, and reliability — which aligns more closely with 15-1244. However, the scripting and performance-enhancement responsibilities introduce a software-development dimension, hence 15-1252 is listed as the alternate.
Rocky Linux and SLES are listed as preferred variants of Linux system administration; they are captured as alternatives to RHEL since the posting treats them interchangeably ('Rocky/SLES preferred').
No security clearance is required; the posting explicitly states 'Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: None'.
Location is inferred as the Washington DC metro area (NOAA NWS headquarters is in Silver Spring, MD); the posting does not explicitly state a city but the customer mission and GDIT's NWS contract strongly imply this geography. The role is not advertised as remote.
Read the full posting
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