Deputy Program Manager / Chief Engineer

Empower AI is AI for government. Empower AI gives federal agency leaders the tools to elevate the potential of their workforce with a direct path for meaningful transformation. Headquartered in Reston, Va., Empower AI leverages three decades of experience solving complex challenges in Health, Defense, and Civilian missions. Our proven Empower AI Platform provides a practical, sustainable path for clients to achieve transformation that is true to who they are, what they do, how they work, with the resources they have. The result is a government workforce that is exponentially more creative and productive. For more information, visit www.Empower.ai.

Empower AI is proud to be recognized as a 2024 Military Friendly Employer by Viqtory, the publisher of G.I. Jobs. This designation reflects the company's commitment to hiring and supporting active-duty and veteran employees.

The Deputy Program Manager and Chief Engineer (DPM-CHENG) provides enterprise-level operational design and management of hybrid operations for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) information technology (IT) infrastructure. USCIS has over 27,000 Government employees and contractors working at over 250 offices worldwide.

The USCIS Enterprise Infrastructure Division (EID) of the Office of Information Technology (OIT) provides IT infrastructure engineering, design, testing, implementation and operational support services for all USCIS enterprise components, to include networks, server rooms, data storage, telecommunications, video conferencing services and infrastructure security. The DPM-CHENG directly supports EID to coordinate, direct, manage, and oversee the design, development, integration, standards, operation and maintenance of infrastructure operations of the enterprise IT infrastructure that supports USICS operations.

The DPM-CHENG shall oversee design, development and execution of innovative solutions and operations of the USCIS IT infrastructure. This role combines hands-on technical leadership with people management (est 5 IT professionals) within the Project Management Office (PMO). The DPM-CHENG will also perform all functions as the Program Manager in his absence. The ideal candidate brings a strong background in cloud infrastructure, automation, and DevOps, paired with proven experience leading operational teams, managing incidents, and driving innovation at scale in regulated environments.

Responsibilities:

Leads and manages the innovation, design and development of projects that optimize reliability, availability, and performance of production hybrid platforms and services for USCIS IT Infrastructure.
• Engineering Lead for the activities of 75 engineers and technicians supporting USCIS IT Infrastructure including, but not limited to:
• Unified Communications,
• Change, Configuration, and Infrastructure Management,
• Automation, and
• Hosting.
• Provides program technical leadership in:
• Cloud architecture and platform engineering,
• Security and compliance,
• Automation, DevSecOps, and observability,
• Coordinates the activities of the Project Management Office.
• Monitor, and improve Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and error budgets for critical systems.
• Leads incident response, including coordination during outages, root cause analysis, and blameless postmortems.
• Drives continuous improvement of USCIS IT Infrastructure operations through automation and process improvement.

• Performs strategic and enterprise level:
  • Collaboration with all USCIS IT Teams.
  • Communication with all USCIS Stakeholders.

• Acts as the PM in his absence.

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• A minimum of ten (10) years of experience in project and program management.
• PMI Project Management Professional (PMP).
• ITIL Foundation.
• A minimum of five (5) years of experience managing Infrastructure IT projects and programs.
• A minimum of three (3) of experience with managing using DevOps and Agile.
• Exceptional technical aptitude and effective written and verbal communications skills.

Desired:

• 10+ years of experience in cloud engineering or cloud operations roles, with deep hands-on expertise in AWS.
• Proven experience operating production, mission-critical systems at scale.
• Strong background in automation and IaC (Terraform and/or CloudFormation).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., AWS CodePipeline, GitLab, Jenkins).
• Deep knowledge of cloud security, IAM, encryption, monitoring, and compliance frameworks.
• Experience supporting regulated or government environments (FedRAMP, SOC 2, ISO 27001).
• Multi-cloud awareness (AWS, OCI, Azure, GCP).
• CCDE - Design Expert.
• CCNP - Enterprise.
• AWS - Certified Solutions Architect - Associate.
• ISC2 - CISSP.
• VW Ware - Cloud Professional.
• SAFe- Architect.
• Certified Scrum Master.
• AZ - Solutions Architect - Expert.

Physical Requirements:

• May require occasional travel between work centers or to client sites.
• Some after-hours or on-call support may be necessary.
• On-site work in a secure government or contractor facility.
• Must be able to work in a high-security environment and comply with all relevant security protocols.
• Standing for long periods.
• Ambulate throughout an office and between several buildings be
• Stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl as required
• Repeatedly lift and carry weight up to 40 pounds
• Travel by land or air transportation up to 25 %

All hiring and promotion decisions at Empower AI are based on merit to bring the best talent available to contribute to our firm's overall success. It is the policy of Empower AI not to discriminate against any applicant for employment, or employee because of age, color, sex, disability, national origin, race, religion, or veteran status. Empower AI is a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.