Systems Engineer - Platform at SAIC
Springfield, VA
$80,001–$120,000from the description
Jul 24, 2026
Springfield, VA
Jul 25, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A systems engineering role focused on designing, deploying, and maintaining enterprise infrastructure for a government program office, with a strong emphasis on Kubernetes and container orchestration. Day-to-day work spans managing virtualized environments, automating infrastructure provisioning, and supporting application modernization through containerized architectures. Suits candidates with hands-on experience in enterprise IT, container platforms, and DoD security compliance frameworks.
Mid level · 2+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
“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
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 (10)
SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role is titled 'Systems Engineer – Platform' and the CWF requirement maps to 'System Administrator – Intermediate Level' (ID 451), pointing toward 15-1244 (Network and Computer Systems Administrators). However, the heavy emphasis on Kubernetes cluster management, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Helm, Ansible), and container orchestration automation also fits 15-1252 (Software Developers). 15-1244 was chosen as primary because the CWF framing, on-premises enterprise IT context, and operational/sustainment language dominate.
The clearance requirement is an active TS/SCI with the additional ability to obtain a TS/SCI with Polygraph — the active TS/SCI is a hard gate.
Degree requirement is None: the JD accepts a High School Diploma/GED plus qualifying certifications as the baseline; a Bachelor's degree is listed as an alternative path to satisfy the CWF certification requirement, not as a standalone hard gate.
The CWF ID 451 certification requirement is a hard gate; CompTIA Security+ is listed as the representative skill with the other qualifying certs (Cloud+, GICSP, GSEC, SSCP) captured as alternatives.
Monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, SolarWinds) are listed together in the required Technical Skills section; Prometheus is used as the primary skill name with the others as alternatives since the JD treats them interchangeably as examples.
Rancher and Istio appear within the required Technical Skills section but are framed as examples ('such as'), so they are captured as preferred to reflect their optional/illustrative nature.
MS SQL Server appears only in the 'Program Scope' narrative context, not in the qualifications — marked as preferred.
Preferred certifications (CKA, CKAD, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, VCP, CASP+, CISSP) are explicitly listed under a 'Preferred Certifications' heading.
Experience range of 2–5 years is stated; the overall years minimum is set to 2 (the minimum of the range).
Requires a TS/SCI clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
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