Data Center Operations Specialist Principal

About the role

Data Center Operations Technician is responsible for the installation, configuration, maintenance, troubleshooting, and decommissioning of data center infrastructure, including bare-metal servers, storage systems, and network switches. This role ensures the reliability, availability, and operational readiness of critical infrastructure while providing technical expertise, proactive problem-solving, and clear communication to internal stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Infrastructure Deployment & Installation
• Rack, stack, cable, and deploy servers, storage arrays, network switches, and supporting infrastructure.
• Install and configure bare-metal systems according to documented hardware and networking requirements and documenting anything new in the environment.
• Perform hardware validation, burn-in testing, and deployment verification.
• Configure network connectivity, VLAN assignments, IP addressing, and port mappings as directed by engineering standards.
• Maintain accurate asset inventory and rack elevation documentation.
• Hardware Lifecycle Management
• Execute hardware refreshes, upgrades, migrations, and decommissioning activities.
• Ensure proper sanitization, removal, disposal, or return of retired equipment according to cyber, organization, and company policy.
• Track asset movement and maintain accurate inventory records throughout the hardware lifecycle.
• Cook equipment receiving, staging, deployment, and retirement processes.
• Troubleshooting & Incident Response
• Diagnose and resolve server, storage, networking, and cable issues.
• Perform root cause analysis for hardware failures and operational incidents.
• Replace failed components including drives, memory, CPUs, power supplies, NICs, and other field-replaceable units.
• Escalate complex issues appropriately while maintaining ownership through resolution.
• Participate in incident response and maintenance activities to minimize service disruption.
• Operation Excellence
• Follow and improve standard operating procedures (SOPs), installation guides, and operation runbooks.
• Ensure all work is performed according to quality, safety, and change management processes.
• Identify opportunities to improve deployment efficiency, operational reliability, and documentation accuracy.
• Support capacity planning, hardware audits, and infrastructure optimization initiatives.
• Technical Advisory & Continuous Improvement
• Serve as a subject matter expert for data center hardware deployment and operational best practices.
• Provide recommendations regarding infrastructure design, deployment methodologies, hardware standards, and operational processes.
• Advise leadership and engineering teams on potential risks, dependencies, and infrastructure readiness.
• Communicate project status, risks, roadblocks, and mitigation plan clearly and professionally.
• Collaborate with engineering, network, systems, facilities, and project management teams.
• Provide timely updates during deployment, incidents, and maintenance activities.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science
• Experience: 5+ years of related experience
• Technical skills: Experience installing, configuring, and decommissioning bare-metal servers, storage systems, and network devices. Strong understanding of data center cabling standards and rack layout best practices. Familiarity with TCP/IP networking, VLANs, DNS, DHCP, routing fundamentals, and switch connectivity.
• Security clearance level: TS/SCI
• US citizenship required
• Experience: Security+ certification required, CDCMP, CCNA, and ITIL certifications preferred

Benefits

The likely salary range for this position is $136,000 - $184,000. This is not, however, a guarantee of compensation or salary. Rather, salary will be set based on experience, geographic location and possibly contractual requirements and could fall outside of this range.

Pay

The likely salary range for this position is $136,000 - $184,000. This is not, however, a guarantee of compensation or salary. Rather, salary will be set based on experience, geographic location and possibly contractual requirements and could fall outside of this range.

Schedule

Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40

Travel Required: Less than 10%

Telecommuting Options: Onsite Work Location: USA VA Newington

Additional Work Locations

Total Rewards At GDIT: Our benefits package for all US-based employees includes a variety of medical plan options, some with Health Savings Accounts, dental plan options, a vision plan, and a 401(k) plan offering the ability to contribute both pre and post-tax dollars up to the IRS annual limits and receive a company match. To encourage work/life balance, GDIT offers employees full flex work weeks where possible and a variety of paid time off plans, including vacation, sick and personal time, holidays, paid parental, military, bereavement and jury duty leave. To ensure our employees are able to protect their income, other offerings such as short and long-term disability benefits, life, accidental death and dismemberment, personal accident, critical illness and business travel and accident insurance are provided or available. We regularly review our Total Rewards package to ensure our offerings are competitive and reflect what our employees have told us they value most.

About Our Work

We are GDIT. A global technology and professional services company that delivers technology solutions and mission services to every major agency across the U.S. government, defense and intelligence community. Our 26,000 experts extract the power of technology to create immediate value and deliver solutions at the edge of innovation. We operate across 50+ countries worldwide, offering leading mission-ready capabilities in AI, cloud, cyber and software development. Join our Talent Community to stay up to date on our career opportunities and events at gdit.com/tc.