Lead Systems Engineer

Unissant, Inc. delivers innovative capabilities to the agencies that keep our nation healthy and safe. We apply our domain expertise, data acumen, and technology know-how to achieve breakthrough results for our clients. Working collaboratively, we advance missions and careers through a focus on honesty, integrity, and dependability. We continuously look for talent, excited to join that effort. To learn more about our exciting organization, please visit us at www.unissant.com.

We are seeking a Lead Systems Engineer to join our team and support our client.

The ideal candidate will lead enterprise-level systems engineering, capability planning, and modernization roadmap development in support of a large federal enterprise IT services program, working closely with government stakeholders, program leadership, engineers, technical leads, and mission partners to define the future-state enterprise environment and develop a phased, executable strategy and roadmap for modernization. This individual will translate mission needs, operational priorities, stakeholder requirements, and technology opportunities into an integrated plan that sequences capabilities across defined planning epochs, establishes dependencies and milestones, and informs investment and implementation decisions.

The successful candidate will bring a strong background in enterprise systems engineering, requirements analysis, capability-based planning, architecture development, and integrated schedule planning. The role requires the ability to connect strategic modernization objectives with actionable engineering planning while balancing mission priorities, technical dependencies, operational continuity, and resource constraints.

This is a technical leadership role for an individual who can operate across the enterprise, facilitate complex stakeholder decisions, and produce the engineering artifacts and roadmaps needed to guide long-term modernization.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead development and maintenance of the systems modernization roadmap, defining the target state, intermediate states, transition strategies, and sequencing of modernization initiatives.
• Develop capability-based plans across multiple planning epochs, establishing the capabilities required in each period, their dependencies, prerequisites, and anticipated outcomes.
• Assess the current enterprise environment, identify capability gaps and technical limitations, and recommend modernization priorities aligned with mission objectives and government strategy.
• Translate strategic objectives into actionable engineering plans, including implementation phases, decision points, milestones, dependencies, and transition timelines.
• Evaluate modernization alternatives, legacy system constraints, technology opportunities, and integration considerations to inform technical recommendations and investment decisions.
• Identify and manage cross-system dependencies, sequencing constraints, critical-path activities, risks, and schedule impacts across multiple modernization initiatives.
• Coordinate with program management, technical leads, architects, and delivery teams to validate estimates, assumptions, resource requirements, and implementation feasibility.
• Engage government mission owners, operational users, program leadership, and technical stakeholders to elicit, analyze, validate, and prioritize enterprise requirements.
• Translate mission objectives and operational needs into measurable capability requirements, functional requirements, system requirements, and technical constraints.
• Analyze conflicting requirements, identify gaps and ambiguities, and develop recommendations that balance mission value, technical feasibility, cost, schedule, and risk.
• Apply systems engineering principles across the enterprise lifecycle, from mission analysis and requirements development through architecture definition, integration planning, deployment, and sustainment.
• Analyze system-of-systems dependencies and assess the impacts of proposed changes across applications, infrastructure, data, cloud services, networks, cybersecurity, and shared enterprise capabilities.
• Support technical trade studies, feasibility assessments, gap analyses, risk assessments, and alternatives analyses to inform architecture and modernization decisions.
• Identify emerging technical and operational risks and develop mitigation strategies, escalation paths, and decision options.

Work Experience and Job Skills:

Required:

• 8+ years of relevant professional experience, including substantial experience in systems engineering, enterprise IT, systems integration, architecture, or technology modernization.
• Experience supporting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or National Targeting Center (NTC), U.S. Border Patrol mission environments.
• Experience supporting large-scale federal enterprise IT services, systems modernization, or systems integration programs.
• Experience with integrated schedule planning, dependency analysis, milestone management, risk identification, and cross-team coordination.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to assess complex technical dependencies and develop practical, defensible recommendations.
• Ability to work collaboratively with government customers, program management, enterprise architects, and multidisciplinary engineering teams.

Preferred:

• Experience developing multi-year modernization roadmaps organized into planning horizons or epochs.
• Understanding of federal enterprise IT technologies and modernization considerations, including cloud platforms, application modernization, data integration, cybersecurity, identity management, and infrastructure transformation.
• Familiarity with agile delivery, DevSecOps, enterprise portfolio planning, and program management processes.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline is required.

Certificates, Licenses and Registrations:

• Relevant systems engineering, enterprise architecture, or program management certifications preferred.

Communication Skills:

• Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate technical issues and trade-offs to both technical and executive audiences.
• Excellent verbal and written skills, ability to present proposals and performance data, comfortable interfacing all levels of organization.
• Ability to write clear and concise creative content in a highly confidential manner.

Clearance Requirements:

• Active CBP clearance or DoD Top Secret (TS) clearance is required.
• Active CBP clearance or active DoD TS or TS/SCI preferred.

Travel:

• Hybrid with on-site work in Ashburn, VA 4 days per week for the first year, and as mission needs require.
• All candidates must be within the greater Washington, DC area / commutable to Ashburn, VA.

Environmental Requirements:

• Mainly a routine office environment.
• May be required to lift up to ten (10) pounds
• Flexible in working extended hours

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the individual(s) assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and skills required. Unissant management reserves the right to modify, add, or remove duties and to assign other duties as necessary. In addition, where applicable and available, reasonable accommodation(s) may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions of this position.

Please note: Candidate(s) will be required to go through pre-employment screening.

Unissant, Inc. is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer! (EOE; M/F/Disability/Vets)