• Ten-year estate strategy and phased investment options; rolling modernization roadmap; site/rack assessment packages; AI-readiness assessments; reference architectures; tested Golden Path automation; migration and rollback plans; technical validation reports; and current configuration and support documentation.

Role Boundaries:

• The role leads assigned contractor engineering and technical assurance. VA retains applicable funding, policy, risk-acceptance, authorization, contractual, and acceptance decisions. Accountable providers retain their implementation and operational responsibilities. Electrical/mechanical work remains with appropriately qualified personnel; AI use and automation require approved tools, data access, scope, and controls.

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications:

Experience:

• 15+ years of progressively responsible infrastructure engineering experience, including 8+ years in data center engineering/architecture and 5+ years leading complex engineering or modernization initiatives. These periods may overlap. Demonstrated responsibility across physical infrastructure and hybrid-cloud environments.

Physical engineering depth:

• Recent, personally performed data center assessments and practical command of rack elevations, power-path redundancy, PDUs, airflow/cooling, cabling, connectivity, equipment placement, capacity, and as-built validation. Ability to read and challenge electrical single-line, mechanical, network, and rack documentation with the appropriate specialists.

Strategy and delivered outcomes:

• Evidence of authoring a multi-year infrastructure or data center strategy and translating it into implemented changes. Direct technical leadership of consolidation, migration, refresh, resilience, or decommissioning work, with a clear account of personal contribution and results.

Cloud and platform engineering:

• Substantial experience with at least one major cloud platform and enterprise compute, storage, networking, virtualization, and backup/recovery. Ability to assess workload placement, hybrid connectivity, resilience, capacity, and lifecycle tradeoffs.

Automation and AI readiness:

• Hands-on ability to develop or review infrastructure automation, APIs, source-controlled configurations, tests, and recovery logic. Experience with Ansible, Terraform, Python, PowerShell, or comparable tools; expertise in every listed tool is not required. Demonstrated ability to reason through AI infrastructure requirements and safely evaluate AI-enabled operational improvements.

Site engagement and Government access:

• Ability to conduct required onsite assessments and travel to designated facilities under applicable safety and access procedures. Ability to satisfy the position's Government background-investigation, suitability, training, and system-access requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting VA, another federal agency, or a large regulated enterprise; AI/HPC or GPU-platform planning and deployment; high-density or liquid-cooled infrastructure; thermal/CFD analysis or digital-twin validation; ITSM/DCIM integration; and building an engineering or automation Center of Excellence.
• Relevant data center design, cloud architecture, automation, or infrastructure credentials are beneficial. Certifications supplement—not replace—demonstrated site engineering and delivery experience. This position is not intended as an AI research-scientist role.
• Internal posting note: Experience thresholds and reporting alignment are proposed recruiting criteria, not verified labor-category minimums. HR and Contracts must confirm the labor category, equivalencies, work location, travel, and suitability/access terms before posting.

Education and communication:

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, information technology, or a related discipline, or an allowable equivalent combination of education and experience. Strong technical writing and the ability to defend designs with engineers and explain investment choices to executive leaders.

Clearance:

• Must be able to obtain and maintain the personnel suitability, credentials, system access, and training required per a Tier 4 / High Risk clearance.

Work Location:

• Onsite data center assessments and travel are required; base location and frequency to be confirmed.