This position is for an application engineer on the Coast Guard's Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Team. You will work with senior architects, developers and system administrators on the SOA team and customers throughout the Coast Guard and Federal Government to design, build, operate, and support the Coast Guard's SOA solutions and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) infrastructure. You will be part of the rotating on-call afterhours operations and maintenance support team. 

Responsibilities:

• Work with customers, architects, administrators, engineers and developers on the SOA team and various other Coast Guard technical teams to help architect, design, develop, implement and maintain mission-critical REST-based Service Oriented Architecture solutions and software applications for multiple Coast Guard business units.

• Operate, maintain and implement continuous improvements to the SOA infrastructure to meet or exceed all SOA Service and Operating Level requirements. Responsibilities include but are not limited to: Configuration management/administration for SOA, evaluating, installing, upgrading, configuring, monitoring, testing and tuning SOA software and related products, backup and recovery policies and procedures, API Server configuration & maintenance (creating and maintaining policies, users, roles, and privileges), ESB tuning and performance monitoring, application/message flow tuning and performance monitoring.

• Develop, validate, coordinate, lead and execute complex maintenance, failover and disaster recovery activities in a 7x24 mission-critical production environment. 

• Work in conjunction with architects to implement continuous improvements and updates to the Coast Guard's SPEAR architecture. 

• Create/maintain/use Java, Javascript, Linux shell, and other custom applications or use Nimsoft and other COTS tools to monitor the performance of the ESB, associated applications and/or to automate routine tasks. 

• Provide 7x24 (rotating on-call duty) production support of applications and supporting software and infrastructure associated with the Coast Guard's SOA to meet mission-critical service level and operating level agreements. 

• Work effectively with SOA and other team members to troubleshoot and promptly identify and address problems. 

• Perform data analysis and report results related to SOA metrics to provide the team and the command with timely and accurate information pertinent to SOA service level and operating level performance. 

• Work with the SOA team to perform licensing, application and data and customer ticket management tasks as required. This includes (but is not limited to) procurement, loading, editing, configuring, restoring, tracking and removing licenses and applications at the request of our customers and tracking the progress and status of work orders and incidents. 

• Prepare clear written instructions and standard operating procedures.

• Help to develop, write and validate enterprise governance standards. 

• Research, test, and coordinate SOA software patches/upgrades. 

• Work with the SOA team to develop, implement, and maintain SOA security policies. 

• Interact with technical teams and vendor support organizations to resolve technical issues.

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: 

• 1-4 years of experience with programming, networking, and/or system administration.
• 1-4 years of application development experience in an object-oriented environment preferred (Java experience strongly preferred)
• 1-4 years operational experience in a mission critical production environment with a focus on installing, configuring, maintaining & troubleshooting server software within a Linux environment is strongly preferred.
• Knowledge of the technologies, protocols, conventions, and protocols used throughout the Internet, such as HTTP, HTML, TCP/IP, DNS, XML, JSON, Javascript, JSP, ASP, AJAX, Java Servlets, SMTP, FTP, etc.
• Demonstrated basic knowledge of TCP/IP networking.
• Positive, enthusiastic attitude and willingness to learn new skills and technologies.
• Creative, resourceful, logical and innovative approach to technical challenges and problem solving is essential.
• Ability to learn to plan, document, install and effectively implement and maintain complex software across heterogeneous server and networking environments.
• Ability to learn to diagnose complex problems effectively and resolve issues in a multi-tier environment.
• Excellent oral and written communications skills including the ability to prepare documentation of standard operating procedures.

Additional Desired Skills and Experience:

• Development experience with asynchronous messaging applications using APIs such Java Message Service (JMS) or Apache NMS.
• Experience writing XSLT transformations and XSD schemas.
• Strong software and service-oriented architecture skills highly desirable. 
• Strong background in ITIL framework and data analysis, measurement and optimization techniques highly beneficial.
• Familiarity with disaster recovery and high availability scenarios highly desirable.
• Demonstrated knowledge of and experience with implementing REST-based software and architecture patterns. 
• Demonstrated programming experience in an object-oriented programming language such as Java or C#.
• Demonstrated knowledge of scripting languages such as Javascript and Python and common data formats especially XML and JSON. These skills are essential as this position will assist Java developers in deploying and testing applications in a high availability ESB environment using REST patterns via asynchronous messaging (JMS) and Java application servers.
• Experience with messaging middleware products such as Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Apache ActiveMQ, Apache Camel is strongly preferred.

Required Education: 

• Associate's degree in Computer Science, IT Engineering, or related degree program or sufficient professional experience and/or current IT certification to substitute for formal education
• CompTIA Security+ Certification

Other Requirements: 

• Active DHS Public Trust- NACI

Zantech provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.