Senior Laboratory IT Architect Manager at KBR in Huntsville, AL

Senior Laboratory IT Architect Manager
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
Title:
Senior Laboratory IT Architect Manager
Program Summary
KBR’s Missile, Aviation, and Ground Systems (MAGS) division delivers mission engineering solutions for critical U.S. Army programs, specializing in aviation and ground systems, integrated air and missile defense, and threat and target systems. As a trusted partner of the U.S. Department of War, MAGS provides innovative, technology-driven solutions to enhance national security. With a global presence and a strong ethical framework, KBR ensures secure, effective, and mission-ready capabilities worldwide.
Position Summary
KBR is seeking a highly experienced Senior Laboratory IT Architect Manager to lead a team responsible for the administration, modernization, and sustainment of classified infrastructure undergoing a Digital Transformation initiative to support rearchitecting laboratory operations, software development environments, AI platforms, and DevSecOps ecosystems.
This role combines hands-on technical leadership with personnel management responsibilities. The selected candidate will oversee daily operations of system administrators and infrastructure engineers while serving as the technical authority for server administration, management of containerized platforms, establishing and enabling a DevSecOps infrastructure, and enterprise IT operations. Responsibilities include management of Windows and Linux environments, network-connected infrastructure, container orchestration platforms, cybersecurity compliance activities, ticketing system modernization, operational metrics development, and workforce planning. This individual will play a key role in developing the solutions architecture to enable and facilitate ongoing digital transformation efforts in the laboratory. Solutions will include, but are not limited to, establishing a DevSecOps process and architecting an “Air-gapped” Artificial Intelligence system hosted in a classified environment.
The successful candidate will establish operational processes, define service-level metrics, collect and analyze performance data, and provide recommendations to leadership regarding staffing, workload balancing, infrastructure investments, and process improvements. This individual will play a key role in developing a scalable, secure, and highly available infrastructure foundation supporting current and future mission requirements.
Key Responsibilities
Team Leadership & Operations
Lead, mentor, task, and develop a team of Systems Administrators and infrastructure personnel.
Provide daily work assignments, prioritization guidance, mentorship, and performance feedback to team members.
Establish operational standards, procedures, and best practices for infrastructure support and sustainment.
Coordinate activities across engineering, cybersecurity, software development, and government stakeholder teams.
Support hiring, onboarding, workforce development, and succession planning initiatives.
Serve as the primary escalation point for infrastructure-related issues and operational challenges.
Service Management & Metrics
Lead the assessment, modernization, and continuous improvement of the organization's ticket management system and associated workflows.
Establish service-level objectives, performance indicators, and operational metrics for infrastructure and support services.
Develop dashboards and reporting mechanisms to provide visibility into workload, response times, system health, resource utilization, and operational effectiveness.
Analyze support trends and infrastructure demand to develop staffing recommendations and forecast future resource requirements.
Measure team productivity, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction to drive continuous improvement initiatives.
Systems Administration & Infrastructure
Oversee administration, configuration, and maintenance of classified Windows and Linux server environments.
Lead deployment and sustainment of enterprise infrastructure supporting software development, AI workloads, modeling and simulation activities, and laboratory operations.
Manage system lifecycle activities including installation, upgrades, patching, configuration management, and technology refresh efforts.
Ensure system availability, reliability, performance, and compliance across classified environments.
Support networking infrastructure, including switches, routers, firewalls, and connected server platforms.
DevSecOps & Container Platforms
Lead deployment, administration, and sustainment of DevSecOps infrastructure and supporting toolchains.
Architect and manage containerized environments utilizing Kubernetes, OpenShift, Docker, Podman, or equivalent technologies.
Oversee CI/CD platforms, source code management systems, security scanning solutions, automation frameworks, and Infrastructure as Code implementations.
Support multi-tenant development environments while ensuring security, isolation, and compliance requirements are maintained.
Collaborate with software engineering teams to improve infrastructure automation and platform reliability.
AI Platform Support
Support infrastructure hosting AI and machine learning workloads, including GPU-enabled compute resources and on-premises AI platforms.
Assist in planning and sustaining scalable AI infrastructure, model hosting environments, and associated storage and networking resources.
Collaborate with AI architects and technical leadership on future platform modernization initiatives.
Cybersecurity & Compliance
Ensure infrastructure complies with RMF, NIST 800-53, DISA STIGs, DoD Zero Trust, and organizational security requirements.
Support cybersecurity accreditation activities and Authority to Operate (ATO) sustainment efforts.
Lead vulnerability remediation initiatives, compliance reporting, security monitoring, and audit preparation activities.
Partner closely with Information Assurance and Cybersecurity teams to maintain secure operational environments.
Required Qualifications:
U.S. Citizenship
Active Secret Security Clearance
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Cybersecurity, Mathematics, or a related STEM discipline with 10+ years of relevant experience, or a Master's degree with 5+ years of relevant experience.
Minimum 3 years of demonstrated leadership experience leading, supervising, or managing systems administration, infrastructure operations.
Experience administering Windows and Linux systems within classified environments.
Experience operating and maintaining secure, mission-critical infrastructure supporting development, testing, and operational workloads.
Strong understanding of networking, virtualization, storage systems, distributed systems, cloud architecture, platform engineering, and enterprise infrastructure design.
Experience working with containerized and/or cloud-native technologies. (e.g.  Kubernetes, OpenShift, Docker, Podman, etc.)
Experience working with environments handling DevSecOps processes in CI/CD pipelines
Experience with Machine Learning and AI infrastructure, platforms, high-performance computing (HPC) environments and supporting technologies.
Experience handling and processing structured and unstructured data sources, including Microsoft products, software repositories, databases, and binary file formats.
Experience developing operational metrics, performance dashboards, workload analytics, and workforce planning recommendations.
Experience supporting RMF-compliant environments and cybersecurity frameworks, including NIST 800-53, DISA STIGs, and DoD security requirements.
Excellent communication, leadership, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement skills.
Desired Qualifications:
Demonstrated success leading infrastructure modernization initiatives, operational transformation efforts, and continuous process improvement programs.
Experience designing, implementing, or sustaining AI Platform-as-a-Service (AI PaaS) environments, including agent orchestration, agentic architectures, conversational AI technologies, and AI service integration.
Experience providing technical guidance for the design and operation of secure, regulated, and multi-tenant AI platforms.
DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II certification or higher.
CISSP, Security+, CASP+, CySA+, CEH, SSCP, RHCSA, RHCE, CKA, CKAD, or equivalent certifications.
DevSecOps toolchains and practices, including Git, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and automated software delivery.
Experience deploying and managing application security and code-scanning tools such as Trivy, SonarQube, Checkmarx, or equivalent solutions.
Experience supporting source code management platforms and software development organizations.
Experience administering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) environments.
Experience deploying and scaling Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions utilizing role-based and attribute-based access control models.
Experience supporting cybersecurity accreditation activities, SDREN-connected environments, and Trellix security solutions.
Experience creating executive dashboards, operational metrics, workload analytics, and reporting solutions to support staffing and resource planning.
Experience managing enterprise IT service management (ITSM) and ticketing platforms such as ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, Remedy, or similar solutions.
Experience with NVIDIA GPU technologies, distributed computing environments, GPU resource allocation, and performance optimization for AI workloads.
Experience deploying and scaling large language model (LLM) inference platforms using vLLM, NVIDIA NIM, or similar technologies.
Experience implementing MLOps platforms, including model lifecycle management, evaluation pipelines, model registries, and continuous AI delivery practices.
Experience deploying and administering vector databases, including OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, or equivalent technologies supporting data segmentation and information flow controls.
Belong, Connect and Grow at KBR

At KBR, we are passionate about our people and our Zero Harm culture.  These inform all that we do and are at the heart of our commitment to, and ongoing journey toward being a People First company.  That commitment is central to our team of team’s philosophy and fosters an environment where everyone can Belong, Connect and Grow. We Deliver – Together.
KBR is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.