Senior IT Systems Engineer-ORCA

Salary range is $91K to $197K with a midpoint of $144K. New hires typically receive between minimum and midpoint, however, we may go slightly higher based on experience, internal equity and market.  

Sound Transit also offers a competitive benefits package with a wide range of offerings, including:

• Health Benefits: We offer two choices of medical plans, a dental plan, and a vision plan all at no cost for employee coverage; comprehensive benefits for employees and eligible dependents, including a spouse or domestic partner.
• Long-Term Disability and Life Insurance.
• Employee Assistance Program.
• Retirement Plans: 401a – 10% of employee contribution with a 12% match by Sound Transit; 457b – up to IRS maximum (employee only contribution).
• Paid Time Off: Employees accrue 25 days of paid time off annually with increases at four, eight and twelve years of service. Employees at the director level and up accrue additional days. We also observe 12 paid holidays and provide up to 2 paid floating holidays and up to 2 paid volunteer days per year.
• Parental Leave: 12 weeks of parental leave for new parents.
• Pet Insurance.
• ORCA Card: All full-time employees will receive an ORCA card at no cost.
• Tuition Reimbursement: Sound Transit will pay up to $5,000 annually for approved tuition expenses.
• Inclusive Reproductive Health Support Services.
• Compensation Practices: We offer competitive salaries based on market rates and internal equity. In addition to compensation and benefits, you’ll find that we provide work-life balance, opportunities for professional development and recognition from your colleagues.

GENERAL PURPOSE:

Serve as a primary technical subject matter expert for the ROOT (Regional ORCA Operations Team) System Operations IT Engineering branch, supporting the regional ORCA Fare System and its seven Agencies. The Senior IT Systems Engineer, under general supervision, performs at a senior professional level providing leadership and mentoring of peers, infrastructure management, security engineering, incident management, system monitoring, and development to ensure reliable, secure, and efficient fare system operations. This role collaborates with Agencies, vendors, Enterprise Architects, Information Security, and other ROOT staff, to develop, implement, and improve solutions. Responsibilities include designing, developing, automating, implementing, and maintaining internal support tools, API integrations, scripts, databases, and external deployments; monitoring and supporting networks, applications, servers, cloud resources, field devices, and back-end systems; troubleshooting incidents, identifying root cause, resolving issues, and implementing corrective actions; and serving as a technical resource for application implementation, system infrastructure, information security, system maintenance, and continuous improvement.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

The following duties are a representative summary of the primary duties and responsibilities. Incumbent(s) may not be required to perform all duties listed and may be required to perform additional, position-specific duties.

• Provide technical team leadership; mentor and coach team members, deliver technical expertise and guidance on key infrastructure, security, and systems engineering functions.
• Champion strategic infrastructure initiatives — identify opportunities, develop implementation plans, and drive execution in alignment with ROOT and ORCA Agency business objectives.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture to design, implement, and evolve systems across production and non-production environments; plan for infrastructure growth, capacity, and lifecycle management; contribute to budget forecasting; develop and maintain infrastructure strategies for efficient and effective use of ROOT infrastructure.
• Evaluate technology needs and design robust technical solutions in coordination with vendors, IT management, IT staff, and Agency partners; review, develop, and implement architecture plans for complex, multi-agency environments.
• Engineer and maintain cloud infrastructure, enterprise websites, application services, databases, network devices, and field components; stay current with emerging practices in infrastructure, security, monitoring, automation, integration, and application development; recommend and implement improvements as appropriate.
• Design, implement, and continuously improve network, application, server, database, and service monitoring to ensure reliability, performance, capacity, and timely detection of incidents across all environments.
• Research, evaluate, and deploy emerging technologies, industry trends, and products to ensure systems are effectively and efficiently designed and utilized; make recommendations that weigh security improvements, cost savings, adoption feasibility, standardization, flexibility, and reuse against business requirements.
• Lead incident management activities including triage, troubleshooting, escalation coordination, service restoration, root cause analysis, and corrective action implementation; communicate clearly with internal teams, ORCA Agencies, vendors, and stakeholders throughout the incident lifecycle. Detect, isolate, resolve, and document complex system, application, database, network, and integration issues using structured, repeatable troubleshooting methods.
• Design, develop, test, and maintain API integrations, custom scripts, automations, databases, data conversions, reporting tools, and operational utilities that improve reliability, security, efficiency, and supportability across the ORCA fare system.
• Build and maintain automation for deployment, configuration management, monitoring, reporting, maintenance, and operations using appropriate scripting and development tools; drive adoption of infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD practices where applicable.
• Lead security engineering activities including implementation, administration, and continuous improvement of information security controls, access management, vulnerability remediation, secure configuration practices, logging, policies and standards (such as NIST, SOC, or CIS) compliance.
• Perform ongoing security posture assessments for ROOT infrastructure and ORCA fare system environments — identify risks, control gaps, configuration weaknesses, and opportunities to strengthen confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience; recommend and implement corrective actions.
• Implement, administer, and optimize IT service management tools that support operations, incident management, change management, and collaboration; guide ROOT and ORCA Agencies on release management, change evaluation, deployment readiness, and adoption of operational best practices.
• Assess technical, operational, security, and customer impacts of proposed code, configuration, infrastructure, and vendor releases from partners, vendors, and internal development teams; provide clear risk assessments and go/no-go recommendations.
• Own and continuously improve IT Engineering team processes; ensure policies, practices, and procedures are interpreted and applied consistently; maintain accountability and compliance with applicable state and federal laws, ROOT/Agency policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Serve as IT Engineering subject matter expert on boards, commissions, committees, and cross-functional working groups as assigned; prepare and deliver technical presentations and briefings.
• Develop, execute, and improve regression testing scripts and scenarios to validate fare system software, hardware, infrastructure, and integration changes prior to production implementation.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, operational runbooks, incident records, root cause analyses, monitoring procedures, security procedures, and continual service improvement recommendations; ensure documentation remains current and actionable.
• Collaborate with Sound Transit IT teams, internal customer teams, ORCA Agencies, vendors, and other stakeholders to resolve issues, improve services, and support reliable fare system operations.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

Education and Experience: Minimum of a 4 Year bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Business Management Information Systems, or closely related field. Minimum 5 years of IT Systems Engineer experience in a distributed, enterprise production environment including experience implementing, configuring, and maintaining advanced/complex infrastructure technology. Or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

Required Knowledge and Skills:

• Managing and maintaining enterprise infrastructure, including cloud-hosted services, Azure resources, web and application servers, virtualization platforms, databases, integrations, and supporting network components.
• Installing, configuring, upgrading, testing, securing, troubleshooting, and optimizing systems, applications, databases, networks, and enterprise services in high-availability production environments.
• Applying security engineering principles, including identity and access management, secure configuration, vulnerability management, logging, monitoring, policy compliance, and risk-based remediation.
• Administering and improving monitoring and observability platforms, dashboards, alerts, logs, metrics, and usage data to detect issues, assess system health, and guide operational decisions.
• Managing incidents through triage, prioritization, escalation, communication, service restoration, root cause analysis, mitigation, documentation, and continual service improvement.
• Diagnosing and resolving complex infrastructure, application, database, network, integration, and performance issues using structured troubleshooting methods and operational data.
• Developing automation, scripts, integrations, and tooling using source control and languages or platforms such as Git, REST APIs, PowerShell, Bash, JavaScript, Python, and similar technologies.
• Designing and supporting secure application and data integrations, including RESTful services, API integration patterns, data exchange, database queries, transformation, and operational application support.
• Using IT service management platforms such as Atlassian Jira or similar tools to support incident, request, change, release, knowledge, and service management processes.
• Supporting development, system integration testing, user acceptance testing, regression testing, deployment readiness, release management, and change evaluation activities.
• Analyzing procedures, monitoring data, incident trends, service performance, and operational metrics to identify risks, recommend improvements, and solve complex operational problems.
• Preparing clear technical documentation, runbooks, reports, incident records, root cause analyses, mitigation plans, and continual service improvement recommendations.
• Researching and evaluating infrastructure technologies, monitoring techniques, security practices, automation approaches, and service delivery improvements.
• Providing advanced technical support and service desk escalation for complex, externally facing systems while coordinating solutions with users, vendors, agencies, and IT teams.
• Communicating complex technical issues clearly to technical and non-technical audiences while maintaining collaborative, customer-focused relationships with stakeholders.
• Interpreting and applying technical standards, policies, procedures, publications, laws, codes, and regulations relevant to infrastructure operations and security.
• Working effectively under pressure, balancing priorities, meeting deadlines, making sound operational decisions, and leading process improvements in a high-availability environment.

Preferred Knowledge and Skills:

• Advanced database structures, SQL query development, performance tuning, maintenance, and administration experience with platforms such as Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or similar technologies.
• Experience in fare collection systems.
• Experience designing and maintaining data transformation, ETL, reporting, analytics, and data conversion processes.
• Advanced methods and techniques for system design, application development, API integration, automation, and systems programming.
• Experience with Java or another high-level programming language used to develop operational tools, integrations, or enterprise applications.
• Experience deploying highly-available infrastructure, cloud services, containerized workloads, or enterprise application platforms.
• Advanced methods and techniques for complex system analysis, data and systems conversions, integrations, testing, and operational readiness.

Physical Demands / Work Environment:  

• Work is performed in a standard office environment.
• Subject to standing, walking, bending, reaching, stooping, and lifting of objects up to 25 pounds. 
• The Agency promotes a safe and healthy work environment and provides appropriate safety and equipment training for all personnel as required.  

Sound Transit is an equal employment opportunity employer. No person is unlawfully excluded from employment action based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation and pregnancy), age, genetic information, disability, veteran status or other protected class.