COMSEC Database Engineer

SAIC is hiring a COMSEC Database Management Engineer in Springfield, VA to own the data behind cryptographic accountability for a global federal mission. The COMSEC Material Control System is an authoritative record of what cryptographic material exists, who holds it, where it moved, and when it was destroyed. You will keep that system running today and design, build, and deploy its replacement.

The role runs on two tracks on purpose. Accountability does not pause for modernization, and the hardest part of the new build is not the new schema — it is understanding what is in the legacy record well enough to carry it forward without losing a transaction. You will do both, which is why this job develops a skill set the market is short of.

What You Will Do:

• Operate the current CMCS database and application in production — availability, backup and recovery, performance tuning, patching, and release deployment.
• Design the Next-Generation CMCS data model: inventory, accounts, custodian and hand receipt chains, chain-of-custody history, destruction records, and access authorizations.
• Build a tiered architecture that separates data by classification and by audience, with access enforced at the row level in the database rather than only in the application.
• Implement an append-only audit architecture where every accountability event carries actor, timestamp, and source, and corrections are new entries rather than overwrites.
• Develop database services and APIs, managed through version control, peer review, and versioned schema migrations in a CI pipeline.
• Integrate CMCS with the systems that generate COMSEC events, including Key Management Infrastructure and federal access management systems supporting personnel onboarding and offboarding.
• Migrate the legacy record — profile it, design the transformation rules, and prove record count, balance, and transaction history parity through automated reconciliation before cutover.
• Provide Tier II and Tier III application support, resolving data errors, failed transactions, and reported discrepancies.

Why This Role:  This is a system of record being rebuilt, not a maintenance seat. You will make the data architecture decisions, then live with them through migration and into production — and few engineers anywhere combine modern data platform skill with real cryptographic accountability depth. There is a defined path toward Senior Database Engineer, CMCS Solution Architect, and engineering leadership.
 

Required Education & Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline and 9 years of experience; Masters and 7 years; 4 additional years of relevant experience may substitute for the degree.

• 5 years of database engineering or development experience. 

• Proven relational data modeling for transactional systems of record — normalization, referential integrity, constraint design, and audit trail architecture.

• Production DBA experience on an enterprise platform (Oracle, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL): backup and recovery, performance tuning, index and query optimization, high availability.

• Advanced SQL and stored procedure development, plus one general-purpose language for data services and automation.

• Experience building system-to-system interfaces — API, message-based, or ETL — with real error handling and reconciliation.

• Hands-on legacy data migration experience: profiling, transformation design, and proving the migration was complete and accurate.

• Working knowledge of federal database security requirements — access control, encryption, audit logging, and the evidence an Assessment and Authorization needs.

Required Clearance:

• US Citizenship.

• Active top secret clearance with SCI eligibility.  

Nice to Have:

• Experience with CMCS, KMI, or another cryptographic accountability system.

• Experience building systems that must produce defensible audit evidence under external inspection — property, custody, controlled substances, or financial accountability all count.

• Multi-level or compartmented data architectures where classification or need-to-know is enforced in the data tier.

• Near real-time dashboards and reporting against a transactional system without degrading transaction performance.

• Familiarity with COMSEC accountability concepts: CCI handling, hand receipts, SF-153 transfers, inventory reconciliation, destruction reporting.

• Agile delivery with JIRA and CI pipelines in a federal accredited environment; ServiceNow ITSM and CMDB.