Performance & Data Optimization Engineer

GDIT is a global technology and professional services company that delivers technology solutions and mission services to the U.S. government, defense, and intelligence communities. The Performance & Data Optimization Engineer will optimize the performance, reliability, security, and cost efficiency of an enterprise cloud data platform supporting the Case Management Modernization Program. The role focuses on database and query tuning, monitoring, incident response, capacity planning, DevSecOps integration, and collaboration with data and platform teams.

Responsibilities:

• Optimize databases and platform performance across cloud data warehouses/lakes, including query execution, indexing, partitioning, and caching
• Monitor system health; manage incidents, events, and operational reporting
• Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks in queries, pipelines, and resource utilization (CPU, memory, storage, network, I/O, concurrency)
• Analyze and tune SQL, ETL/ELT, data models, ingestion patterns, and workload performance for efficiency and cost
• Establish and maintain SLAs, baselines, dashboards, and automated monitoring/alerting
• Plan capacity, perform workload analysis, and guide scaling and cost-optimization decisions
• Collaborate with platform engineers, DBAs, architects, and application teams to optimize compute/storage configurations and resolve issues
• Maintain access controls, user roles, and identity integrations including SSO, MFA, and JENIE-based least privilege enforcement
• Provide disaster recovery and continuity options including high availability, fault tolerance, and automated failover
• Integrate DevSecOps tools and processes with enterprise systems to ensure unified security posture
• Manage centralized secrets with automated rotation, access logging, and policy enforcement
• Embed SAST, DAST, SCA, and CSPM tools into CI/CD for continuous assessment and remediation
• Implement automated, continuous 24/7 monitoring for security, performance, and compliance with real-time dashboards
• Ensure automated SBOM generation and management for all deployed artifacts
• Provide diagnostics, metrics gathering, and performance tuning; support canary releases for testing
• Collaborate with data governance and data quality teams to ensure performance optimization efforts align with data standards and controls
• Collaborate with Data Platform Engineers, Database Administrators, Data Architects, and Data Engineers to resolve performance issues
• Perform automated, full-stack health checks at agreed intervals
• Deliver monthly reports covering incidents, stability, performance, configurations, ticket volume, and resolution times
• Support high availability, disaster recovery, and business continuity requirements
• Contribute to platform performance standards, engineering guidelines, and optimization best practices

Requirements:

• GitHub, Jira and Confluence administration, Web Application Security
• 5 + years of related experience
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field
• 5+ years' experience in IT system engineering, development, and programming with a strong focus on diagnosing, optimizing, and improving system and data‑pipeline performance
• Deep expertise in AWS services across compute, storage, networking, monitoring, and logging
• Proficient with IaC tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, Azure Bicep) for building optimized, cost‑efficient, autoscaling infrastructure configurations
• Experienced with monitoring/APM platforms (CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic) focusing on identifying performance bottlenecks, improving query and workload efficiency, and reducing latency
• Strong background in incident response and change management with the ability to quickly isolate, troubleshoot, and resolve performance degradation issues
• Skilled with CI/CD toolchains (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab, ArgoCD) to optimize build and deployment pipelines and reduce performance overhead
• Strong scripting abilities (Python, PowerShell, Bash)
• Advanced DevSecOps and GitOps experience with the ability to optimize deployment workflows, automate testing, and ensure high‑performance release pipelines
• Hands-on experience building, testing, and maintaining containerized applications
• Expert in version control and enterprise CI/CD pipelines, leveraging automation to streamline performance‑critical workflows
• Flexible collaborator across multiple teams and products
• Experience with FinOps, cost modeling, forecasting, and cloud cost optimization
• Knowledge of federal compliance frameworks (FedRAMP, NIST, JISF Rev 5)
• Skilled in log/metric analysis and cloud performance tuning
• Experienced working across product teams to assess system health
• Strong SQL and database performance‑tuning skills with ability to optimize ELT/ETL pipelines, refactor SQL logic, tune joins, improve concurrency, and tune execution plans
• Experience in query optimization, indexing, partitioning, clustering, and execution-plan analysis
• Familiar with cloud data platforms and distributed data-processing environments
• Strong performance‑monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for database optimization, pipeline tuning, and cloud‑platform efficiency improvements
• Excellent analytical and problem‑solving skills
• Must be able to pass a background check to obtain a position of Public Trust
• Must be a US Person (Green Card Holder, US Permanent Resident Alien, Refugee, Asylee, or US Citizen)
• Preferred experience with Snowflake, Databricks, Amazon Redshift, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, or equivalent platforms
• Preferred experience with optimizing large-scale analytical workloads
• Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP)
• Snowflake SnowPro Advanced
• Databricks Certified Data Professional
• AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
• AWS Certified Data Engineer
• Docker Certified Associate
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator
• Certified Professional DevSecOps Certification Course
• ITIL, AWS SysOps, Google Cloud DevOps Engineer