Senior Jira / JSM System Administrator

Peraton is seeking a Senior Jira / Jira Service Management (JSM) System Administrator to support the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Mission Area (WMA) under a federal IT services contract. In this role, you will serve as an embedded operations specialist responsible for the day-to-day administration, configuration, and user support of USGS's Jira and JSM platforms, the central issue-tracking and service-desk infrastructure for one of the nation's most critical scientific agencies. You will play a key role in supporting an enterprise-scale migration from Jira Data Center to Atlassian Government Cloud (AGC), maintaining high availability and service quality across a distributed user base, and ensuring full compliance with Federal IT security and accessibility standards. This is a fully remote, U.S.-based position working standard Eastern Time business hours in direct support of a federal Government customer. 

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Mission Area (WMA) is one of the federal government's most vital scientific programs, responsible for delivering the nation's water data, including streamflow and groundwater levels, water quality, and drought monitoring, to inform decisions that affect communities across the country. To support the hundreds of scientists, engineers, and field personnel who power this mission, the WMA relies on a modern, cloud-hosted application ecosystem centered on Atlassian Jira and Jira Service Management. Peraton supports the WMA through a long-term federal IT operations contract, currently at the forefront of a significant digital modernization initiative migrating the WMA's enterprise work management environment from Jira Data Center to the Atlassian Government Cloud (AGC). This multi-year effort will shape how one of America's premier scientific agencies operates for years to come. 

Work Location: Remote 

 What You Will Do:  

• Administer Atlassian Jira and Jira Service Management at the site and project levels, including workflows, schemes, custom fields, and automation rules 

• Manage the full lifecycle of third-party Jira plugins, including installation, patching, licensing, and security review 

• Deliver project-level Jira training and technical guidance to end users and administrators 

• Coordinate configuration changes with USGS product owners, developers, and system architects 

• Support migration of WMA workflows, data, and processes from Jira Data Center to Atlassian Government Cloud (AGC) 

• Assist WMA teams with adoption of cloud-native AGC features and coordinate with other USGS Jira administrators in the shared AGC environment 

• Perform SOP-driven daily operational checks and maintain centralized knowledge base articles, SOPs, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides 

• Maintain WMA application inventories including dependencies, version histories, and licensing terms 

• Respond to service requests within 8 business hours and manage ticket triage, escalation, and resolution 

• Utilize Government-designated monitoring tools including Zabbix, nmap, CloudCheckr, and BigFix 

• Distribute outage notifications within 4 hours of identification, run daily standups, and deliver meeting notes within 5 business days 

• Author root cause analysis reports for critical events and contribute to after-action reviews and SLO impact reporting 

• Comply with FISMA, NIST, Section 508, and Privacy Act requirements applicable to individual privileged users 

• Complete DOI annual security awareness training and perform all work on Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) 

Basic Qualifications:  

• Bachelor’s degree and 7 years of professional experience, or a Master’s degree and 5 years of professional experience, or a high school diploma/equivalent and 11 years of professional experience.

• U.S. Citizenship required; must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance; all work must be performed within the United States. 

• Strong hands-on Atlassian Jira administration at the project and/or site-administrator level 

• Demonstrated experience administering Jira Service Management (JSM), including service desk configuration and SLA management 

• Experience managing third-party Jira plugins through their full lifecycle 

• Experience supporting or executing a Jira Data Center to cloud migration 

• Experience working in a federal or regulated IT environment with FISMA or NIST compliance requirements 

• Working knowledge of Jira Query Language (JQL) and Atlassian Cloud or AGC administration 

• Familiarity with monitoring tools including Zabbix, nmap, CloudCheckr, and/or BigFix 

• Must be U.S.-based; available 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time, Monday through Friday 

Preferred Qualifications:  

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field strongly preferred. 

• Atlassian Certified Professional (Jira Administration, Server or Cloud) 

• ITIL Foundation v4 or higher 

• CompTIA Security+ or equivalent DoD 8570/8140-compliant certification 

• Prior experience supporting USGS, DOI, or other Department of the Interior IT environments 

• Experience with Atlassian Government Cloud (AGC) FedRAMP-authorized configurations 

• Familiarity with NIST RMF, DOI SDLC, and POA&M management processes 

• Experience writing Accessibility Conformance Reports (VPAT v2.1+)