Intermediate Systems Engineer - IT Infrastructure & Applications
About the role
nou Systems, Inc. (nSI) is now a 100% ESOP company that values teamwork and collaboration, empowering customers with products, services, and expertise backed by powerful, data‑driven insights that transform defense systems and improve capabilities. Since its founding in 2012, nou Systems has built a reputation for excellence in innovative engineering, prototype development, and technical and professional services across missile defense, cybersecurity, test range modernization, biotechnology, and space control. Our diverse and highly skilled team delivers state‑of‑the‑art solutions from concept to full integration, offering significant advancement and personal career development opportunities while treating employees like family. We are opening an Intermediate Systems Engineer position focused on IT Infrastructure & Applications to join the Teams Next – Systems Engineering & Analyses (TN SEA) team in Huntsville, AL or Colorado Springs, CO. You will be part of the IT Strategy & Implementation Team within the Missile Defense Agency's Transformation Task Force (MDA/TF) office.
Responsibilities
You'll be part of a dynamic team of government civilians and defense contractors supporting MDA's Office of the Chief Information Officer within MDA/TF. The work requires a breadth of skills and the ability to coordinate across multiple organizations. The position requires an understanding of IT infrastructure and applications, systems engineering (particularly the left side of the V), data center consolidation, legacy application modernization, workload migration, and the program‑management perspective needed to connect those disciplines to real cost, schedule, and risk. The emphasis of this role is on the front end of the engineering lifecycle.
- Elicit, develop, and manage requirements for enterprise IT modernization initiatives, working directly with government stakeholders, mission owners, and application owners to translate operational needs into engineering requirements.
- Baseline the current‑state environment through application portfolio analysis, infrastructure inventory, and dependency mapping across facilities, systems, and interfaces.
- Develop target‑state architectures and supporting documentation, including architecture diagrams, interface definitions, data flows, and transition roadmaps.
- Conduct Analyses of Alternatives (AoAs) and trade studies to support disposition decisions for legacy applications and infrastructure, including rehost, replatform, refactor, and retire recommendations.
- Support planning and sequencing of data center consolidation and workload migration activities, including migration wave definition, dependency and cutover risk analysis, and coordination of technical dependencies against program cost and schedule.
- Apply systems engineering "V" processes across the acquisition lifecycle, maintaining requirements traceability from stakeholder need through architecture, design, and transition.
- Author and review technical documentation, white papers, and decision briefings that communicate architectural direction to both technical and non‑technical audiences, including senior government leadership.
- Coordinate across cybersecurity, infrastructure, applications, and program management stakeholders to ensure modernization efforts are technically sound, secure, and executable.
Requirements
- Bachelor's in a STEM field
- 7+ years working on missile defense‑related or other complex, large DoD program/project
- Works independently, as a team member, or leading teams/tasks, applying engineering rigor to solve engineering/scientific problems
- Must possess an active Secret clearance and be eligible for TS/SCI
- Must be a U.S. citizen to be eligible for this position (lacking any one of these disqualifies you)
Qualifications
- Information technology background paired with a formal systems engineering background; ability to operate credibly with both IT infrastructure teams and systems engineering organizations
- Demonstrated strength in front‑end ("left side of the V") systems engineering: requirements elicitation and development, concept of operations, functional decomposition, architecture definition, interface definition, and requirements traceability
- Program management perspective, with the ability to think in terms of schedule, dependencies, cost, and risk; prior experience serving in a program or project management capacity is highly valued
- Experience supporting data center consolidation, closure, or relocation efforts
- Experience with legacy application modernization and application portfolio rationalization
- Experience planning or executing workload migrations from legacy on‑premises environments to modern hosting environments, including cloud (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government) and virtualized on‑premises infrastructure (VMware vSphere)
- Familiarity with the Risk Management Framework (RMF), ATO package development, NIST 800‑series controls, and DISA STIGs
- Familiarity with Zero Trust architecture principles and Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) concepts
- Working knowledge of DoD Impact Level 5 and 6 (IL5/IL6) hosting environments, virtualization, containerization, and Infrastructure as Code concepts, sufficient to evaluate and direct vendor‑proposed solutions
- Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and/or DoD 8140/8570 baseline certification (e.g., Security+, CASP+, CISSP)
- Prior experience supporting MDA or another large DoD agency in an engineering or advisory capacity
- Strong oral and written communication skills, including experience briefing senior government stakeholders