Operations Support Engineer / Systems Administrator
Credence · McLean · $85,000–$130,000 (stated in the posting)
At Credence, we support mission-critical federal missions through technology, partnership, and trust. We provide solutions across cloud modernization, cybersecurity, enterprise infrastructure, and advanced technology for defense and health organizations.
Credence is a privately held company recognized as a top place to work and listed on the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies list for more than a decade. We believe in servant leadership and focus on the success of our clients, employees, and partners.
Position Summary
Credence is seeking an Operations Support Engineer / Systems Administrator to support systems engineering and hosting operations for federal customers.
The primary responsibility of this position is to support recurring system patching requirements, including scheduled nightly patching activities outside normal business hours. The selected candidate will execute and monitor existing AWX/Ansible patching automation, validate results, troubleshoot failures, and coordinate remediation activities across Linux and Windows environments.
The role will also support system administration, configuration management, vulnerability remediation, monitoring, troubleshooting, documentation, and other operational activities required to maintain secure and reliable hosting environments.
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Execute and monitor scheduled patching jobs through AWX/Ansible.
- Support scheduled nightly patching activities outside normal business hours, including patch preparation, execution, post-patch validation, and troubleshooting.
- Review AWX job results, investigate failed or incomplete patching runs, resolve issues, and coordinate re-execution when necessary.
- Review patching requirements, repository content, maintenance schedules, and approved change requests before patch execution.
- Validate system health, services, connectivity, and application availability after patching activities.
- Troubleshoot patching failures, package conflicts, repository issues, dependency problems, service failures, and unexpected system behavior.
- Monitor patching progress and provide status updates, completion reports, and exception information.
- Identify systems that cannot be patched and document the reason, impact, risk, and required remediation.
- Support Linux and Windows server administration, configuration, hardening, maintenance, and troubleshooting.
- Assist with vulnerability remediation and compliance-related system maintenance activities.
- Support server provisioning, operating system upgrades, configuration changes, system retirement, and technical refresh activities.
- Troubleshoot operating system, storage, networking, authentication, permissions, certificates, services, and application dependencies.
- Coordinate with Systems Engineering, Platform Engineering, application teams, cybersecurity personnel, and customer stakeholders to resolve technical issues.
- Assist with maintaining AWX job templates, inventories, variables, credentials, procedures, and related documentation.
- Use existing automation and develop scripts or process improvements to improve patching efficiency, validation, reporting, and operational support.
- Maintain accurate system records, patching documentation, procedures, runbooks, and operational reports.
- Follow approved change-management, incident-management, security, and configuration-management processes.
- Participate in scheduled maintenance activities, incident response, and other operational support activities as required.
- Participate in a rotating on-call schedule, if assigned.
Requirements
- Must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust.
- Must have at least 3 years of experience in systems administration, systems engineering, infrastructure operations, cloud operations, or a related technical field.
- Must have hands-on experience administering Linux or Windows server environments.
- Must have experience performing operating system patching, package management, system maintenance, and post-patch validation.
- Must have experience using AWX/Ansible or a similar automation platform for patching, configuration management, or systems administration.
- Must have experience troubleshooting AWX/Ansible job failures, playbooks, inventories, variables, package dependencies, repository issues, and execution results.
- Must have the ability to support scheduled nightly patching activities outside normal business hours, as required.
- Must have experience with Linux package-management tools such as DNF, YUM, RPM, or equivalent technologies.
- Must have experience with Windows patching or Windows Server administration.
- Must have experience using Shell, Python, PowerShell, or a similar scripting language.
- Must have familiarity with system monitoring, logging, service management, and basic networking troubleshooting.
- Must have the ability to follow established procedures while applying sound technical judgment to resolve issues.
- Must have strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Must have the ability to document technical issues, maintenance activities, exceptions, and resolution steps.
- Must have a CompTIA Security+ certification or the ability to obtain it within the first 60 days.
- Must have an AWS certification or the ability to obtain one within the first 90 days.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting RHEL, Amazon Linux, Windows Server, or other enterprise operating systems.
- Experience supporting systems hosted in AWS, AWS GovCloud, or other cloud environments.
- Experience with AWS Systems Manager, Red Hat Satellite, WSUS, repository mirrors, or similar patch-management and configuration-management tools.
- Experience with system hardening, STIGs, vulnerability remediation, or federal compliance requirements.
- Experience with EC2, EBS, S3, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and related AWS services.
- Experience troubleshooting DNS, networking, storage, authentication, certificates, and application dependencies.
- Experience supporting production environments with formal change, incident, and problem-management processes.
- Experience with enterprise monitoring, logging, ticketing, or configuration-management platforms.
- Experience developing automation for patching, validation, reporting, or operational support.
Salary Range: $85,000-$130,000 annually. Actual compensation will be determined based on the selected candidate's experience, education, skills, and overall qualifications.
Benefits
- Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
- Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
- Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
- Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
- Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
- Short Term & Long Term Disability
- Training & Development