Systems Engineer (Cloud infrastructure)
Ardent Principles, Inc. · Herndon, VA
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Jul 15, 2026
Herndon, VA
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A full-time, fully onsite systems engineering role focused on automating and managing cloud infrastructure in AWS — covering resource provisioning with Bash and Terraform, server administration (Apache, Tomcat, Express), SQL and NoSQL database support, and PKI certificate maintenance. The position also involves vulnerability scan analysis, DevOps tooling (Jenkins, GitHub, Jira), and building automated test scripts for application deployments. Requires an active TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Polygraph.
Senior level · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
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).
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 (6)
An active TS/SCI with Full Scope Polygraph is explicitly stated as required and is a hard gate for this role.
The role is a broad mix of cloud infrastructure automation (Terraform, CloudFormation), server/OS administration, database administration, DevOps tooling, and some application testing — making it a genuine hybrid between Systems Administration (15-1244) and Software Developer/DevOps (15-1252). The primary framing leans toward operating and maintaining infrastructure rather than shipping new software, so 15-1244 was chosen, with 15-1252 as the runner-up.
Jenkins and GitHub are listed under 'Knowledge of DEVOPS tools such as Jenkins and Github' — the 'such as' qualifier indicates named examples of a category, but they appear within the hard-requirements block, so they are treated as required.
No specific years of experience or degree requirement are stated anywhere in the posting.
Compensation is described only as 'Highly Competitive Salary' with no figures provided.
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.
Read the full posting
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