Systems Administrator

The Database/Middleware Engineer, Mid provisions, configures, and administers enterprise middleware platforms that connect distributed applications and databases in a highly regulated government environment. The role owns day-to-day middleware operations, including monitoring, incident troubleshooting, and performance tuning to maintain stable, secure integrations for mission-critical systems. This engineer leads patching, upgrades, migrations, and decommissioning activities for middleware software while aligning all changes with enterprise security, change management, and lifecycle standards. 

 

Key Responsibilities 

• Deploy, configure, and maintain middleware platforms such as enterprise application servers, web servers, and messaging systems, tailoring settings for reliability, scalability, and observability across environments. 

• Monitor middleware performance and availability using logs, metrics, and alerting tools, diagnose complex integration issues, and implement tuning changes to improve throughput and stability. 

• Plan and execute middleware patching, upgrades, and environment migrations, including coordination of maintenance windows, rollback strategies, and post-change validation for mission-critical services. 

• Design and enforce middleware security configurations, including authentication and authorization models, TLS certificates, cipher suites, and secure configuration baselines that align with enterprise and regulatory requirements. 

• Implement and maintain backup and recovery approaches for middleware configurations, scripts, and artifacts, and participate in continuity of operations and disaster recovery exercises. 

• Document and maintain detailed runbooks, architecture and connectivity diagrams, inventories, and lifecycle roadmaps for middleware components to support audit, compliance, and knowledge transfer. 

• Evaluate new middleware products and features, perform proof-of-concept implementations, and provide recommendations on standards, patterns, and best practices for enterprise adoption. 

• Coordinate with application teams to support deployments, troubleshoot application-to-middleware issues, and optimize connection pooling, thread usage, and resource configuration. 

Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree (BA/BS) in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent relevant work experience. 

• 4–7 years of hands-on middleware engineering or administration experience supporting production or mission-critical environments. 

• Strong proficiency with middleware technologies and tools, including monitoring, troubleshooting, patching, migrating, and upgrading middleware environments in multi-tier architectures. 

• Demonstrated understanding of security standards, best practices, and lifecycle management for middleware applications, including configuration of secure protocols and access controls. 

• Experience documenting and maintaining comprehensive operational procedures, connectivity diagrams, and lifecycle support plans for middleware platforms. 

• Active SECRET security clearance or ability to obtain and maintain clearance as required by the client. 

• U.S. citizenship and willingness to travel less than 10% of the time. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience administering enterprise middleware stacks such as WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, or similar platforms in complex, multi-tier architectures. 

• Familiarity with message-oriented middleware, integration platforms, or API gateways supporting event-driven and service-based architectures. 

• Professional certifications or advanced training focused on middleware administration, integration platforms, or related infrastructure technologies. 

• Prior experience operating in highly regulated or federal IT environments with mature change management, security, and compliance frameworks.