Talascend is currently seeking a Systems Administrator for a contract opportunity with our client in Washington, District Of Columbia.
Overview
This role involves leading enterprise virtualization operations on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization in support of federal infrastructure, with a focus on designing, administering, and optimizing virtual machine services for security and high performance.
Responsibilities
- Lead administrative and design activities for OpenShift Virtualization deployed on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
- Deploy, configure, and maintain the OpenShift Virtualization operator, KubeVirt components, CDI, and associated cluster services.
- Manage full VM lifecycle operations on KubeVirt, including provisioning, live migration, cloning, snapshots, patching, and decommissioning.
- Configure VM networking and storage to meet performance and availability requirements.
- Provide troubleshooting expertise across the OpenShift cluster layer and the VM guest layer to resolve complex issues.
- Monitor platform health, performance, and capacity, proactively identifying operational risks.
- Coordinate incident triage, escalation, and service restoration efforts within a 24x7x365 operational environment.
- Lead technical teams supporting daily system operations and migration activities.
- Ensure security compliance and alignment with federal security requirements, including managing secure configurations and patching.
- Plan, execute, and validate VMware-to-OpenShift Virtualization migration waves using the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV / Forklift).
- Maintain detailed documentation for platform configurations, changes, migration activities, and recovery procedures.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- 9-12 years of experience supporting server virtualization technology in enterprise environments.
- Hands-on experience with OpenShift Virtualization / KubeVirt or similar Kubernetes-native virtualization platforms.
- Experience leading technical teams supporting system operations.
- Proficiency with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, RHEL system administration, and virtualization administration tools.
- Ability to obtain and maintain SEC Public Trust security clearance.
- Demonstrated ability to perform the duties of this position through relevant experience, training, or education.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience executing VMware-to-OpenShift Virtualization migrations using MTV / Forklift.
- Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Virtualization (EX316).
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).
- Additional certifications such as RHCE or VMware VCP-DCV.
- Experience supporting federal civilian agency infrastructure operations under SLA and governance models.
- Experience supporting hybrid on-premises and cloud infrastructure environments.
- ITIL 4 Foundation or similar service management certification.
Shift
Standard work hours are expected with possible participation in on-call or surge support activities depending on operational needs.
We thank all applicants for their interest. However, only those qualified individuals who closely meet the qualifications of the position will be contacted. The details of the position are only a summary, other duties may be assigned as necessary.
Background Check and Drug Screen may be required.
Talascend is an Equal Opportunity Employer that recruits and hires qualified candidates without regard to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, disability, or veteran status.