Solutions Architect Jobs in District of Columbia

• You are in front of the customer. A large share of this job is conversation: working sessions with Navy stakeholders and program offices, drawing requirements out of people who describe outcomes rather than specifications, and giving recommendations with the tradeoffs attached. You will be on-site at the Navy Yard most days because that access is the point.
• You think in systems. Applications, networks, identity, hosting, and security controls are one design problem here. We need someone who can reason across all of it, see where a decision in one layer costs us in another, and write the architecture down clearly enough that engineers and assessors both work from it.
• You are technical. You will build architectures, proofs of concept and reference implementations that validate the hard parts of a design and give the customer and our development team something concrete to build against. You will also work with highly technical Navy counterparts to ensure architectures and implementations set the standard for scalability, reliability, and security.

Responsibilities

• Work the requirements with the customer. Run working sessions, interviews, and design reviews with Navy stakeholders. Draw out what the mission actually needs, surface constraints early, and document requirements the delivery team can build to.
• Own system-level architecture. Design end-to-end architectures spanning applications, data, networks, identity, and hosting. Produce the diagrams, interface definitions, and design documentation that engineers build from and assessors review. Build prototypes and reference implementations that retire technical risk, validate integrations, and become reusable patterns for the rest of the organization.
• Architect for Navy networks. Design to the constraints of Navy network environments, including boundary and firewall policy, ports and protocols approval, enterprise identity integration, transport limitations, and operation under restricted or intermittent connectivity.
• Design to zero trust. Apply zero trust principles across each design: identity-centric access, least privilege, micro-segmentation, continuous verification, and encryption in transit and at rest. Map designs to the DoD zero trust target activities and explain where a system sits against them.
• Make and defend technical recommendations. Run trade studies, compare options against cost, risk, schedule, and security posture, and brief the recommendation to audiences that range from working engineers to program leadership.
• Carry designs through accreditation. Work the Risk Management Framework path with ISSOs and assessors: security control selection and implementation, STIG hardening, eMASS artifacts, POA&M remediation, and the evidence needed to reach and keep an ATO.

Clearance: Active Secret clearance required

• Requires Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of professional experience in systems engineering, software engineering, or solution architecture (10+ years preferred)

Required Qualifications:

• Experience designing, deploying, or operating systems on U.S. Navy networks
• System-level architecture ownership for a production system, including the design documentation engineers build from
• Enterprise network and security architecture: segmentation, boundary protection, firewalls and routing, IAM, encryption, and zero trust principles
• Cloud architecture experience in Azure or AWS, including networking, identity, and access control
• Experience supporting system accreditation under RMF
• Ability to gather customer requirements, turn them into scoped technical solutions, and present recommendations to technical and government leadership audiences

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with NMCI, NGEN-R, or Flank Speed / M365 DoD, ideally under PEO Digital or another Navy program office
• Navy RMF experience: eMASS, ATO/IATT packages, STIG compliance, and working with an SCA
• DoD cloud security (Azure Government, AWS GovCloud) to the DoD Cloud SRG, plus familiarity with the DoD Zero Trust Reference Architecture
• DoD ICAM or Naval Identity Services integration (CAC/PIV, Entra ID, Keycloak)
• DevSecOps, security monitoring (Splunk, Sentinel, EDR), and DoD network controls (Comply-to-Connect, VPN/IPsec, cross-domain)
• Certifications: Security+ or higher (DoD 8140), plus an architecture or security cert such as CISSP, AWS or Azure Solutions Architect, TOGAF, or CCNP Security

• The expected salary range within the Washington, DC metropolitan area is: $155,000-$210,000. Final compensation is unique to each individual and will be determined based on factors such as experience, education, geographic location, and contractual requirements. This is not a guarantee.
• Benefits include Health/Dental/Vision, 401(k), Paid Time Off, STD/LTD/Life Insurance/Voluntary Life Insurance, Stipends, Referral Bonuses, and more.