Entry Level Backup Engineer Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Storage Administrator (Entry Level to SME) TS/SCI with Poly REQUIRED
Category: Database Administration
Main location: United States, Virginia, Arlington
Position ID:J0726-2000
Employment Type: Full Time
Position Description:
CGI Federal has an exciting opportunity for Storage Administrators within our Intel sector advancing the national security mission through cutting edge technology. You must have a passion for keeping pace with rapidly evolving technology advancements and leveraging your knowledge on a highly collaborative team to deliver state-of-the-art capabilities.
The Storage Administrator assists with monitoring data storage systems, running routine backups, and resolving basic space allocation tasks under the supervision of senior IT staff. The role serves as an entry-level position focused on building foundational data infrastructure skills.
CGI Federal is growing its high-performance team whose members share a passion for building high-quality, scalable, advanced IT solutions in a collaborative, fast-paced, outcome-driven mission.
This position is located in our Arlington office; however, a hybrid working model is acceptable.
Your future duties and responsibilities:
Key Responsibilities (Entry Level)
• Backup Monitoring: Track scheduled daily and weekly backup jobs across servers to ensure enterprise data is protected.
• Basic Provisioning: Execute simple tasks to allocate disk space or file shares to end-users and servers as requested.
• System Monitoring: Check storage hardware health, network switches, and available storage capacity using standard management tools.
• Issue Triage: Create support tickets and escalate complex connectivity or hardware failures to senior administrators.
• Documentation: Maintain and update basic IT diagrams, network topologies, and routine operating procedures.
Key Responsibilities (Junior Level)
• Storage Provisioning: Allocate and map LUNs or shared drives to servers and virtual machines based on predefined requirements.
• Backup & Recovery: Execute and monitor routine data backups, verify the success of backup jobs, and perform basic file or system restorations.
• Performance & Capacity Monitoring: Run reports on disk usage, track data growth trends, and reclaim unused or abandoned storage capacity.
• Hardware & Software Maintenance: Perform routine health checks, apply firmware updates, and help manage hardware lifecycles.
• Tier 1 Troubleshooting: Act as the first point of contact for storage-related incidents, such as latency issues, path failures, or access problems.
• Documentation: Maintain and update network diagrams, operational procedures, and technical documentation.
Key Responsibilities (Mid-Level)
• Enterprise Storage Management: Provision and manage block and file storage across multi-vendor environments (e.g., Pure Storage, Dell, NetApp, IBM).
• Incident Resolution: Troubleshoot complex, escalated storage issues, bottlenecks, and fabric/switch (Fiber Channel) connectivity problems.
• Performance Tuning & Monitoring: Utilize monitoring tools (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, vendor-specific consoles) to track latency, IOPS, and proactively identify bottlenecks.
• Data Protection & Recovery: Execute and verify snapshot schedules, replication policies, and backup/restore operations to ensure strict recovery point and time objectives.
• Lifecycle Management: Plan capacity, reclaim unused storage, and assist in non-disruptive firmware updates and hardware expansions.
• Automation: Write and maintain scripts (e.g., Python, Bash, PowerShell) to automate routine provisioning and capacity reporting.
Key Responsibilities (Senior Level)
Architecture & Engineering
• Design, build, and scale highly resilient enterprise SAN, NAS, and distributed object storage infrastructures across hybrid on-premise and multi-cloud environments.
• Formulate long-term storage capacity planning and lifecycle management strategies tied to business continuity and global data growth.
• Evaluate and integrate bleeding-edge software-defined storage (SDS) and NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) architectures to eliminate performance bottlenecks.
Operations & Advanced Troubleshooting
• Spearhead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and resolve Tier 3/escalated incidents related to multi-vendor storage arrays, high-performance computing (HPC) parallel file systems, and Fiber Channel (FC) interconnection fabrics.
• Perform extreme-level storage and IOPS performance tuning to optimize database and virtual machine storage network traffic.
• Administer, zone, and configure complex SAN topologies (e.g., Brocade/Cisco MDS) and enterprise NAS systems (e.g., Pure Storage, NetApp DataONTAP).
Data Protection, DR & Automation
• Architect and test multi-site disaster recovery (DR) architectures, focusing on synchronous/asynchronous replication, malware-resilient immutable snapshots, and synthetic backup pipelines (e.g., Rubrik, Commvault).
• Create infrastructure-as-code (IaC) solutions and automation scripts (via Python, Ansible, or Terraform) for routine provisioning, auditing, and reporting.
• Enforce strict Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and data security/governance policies to meet regulatory requirements.
Key Responsibilities (SME Level)
• Architectural Design & Engineering: Design multi-petabyte unified storage architectures (SAN, NAS, Object, and NVMe-oF) that balance cost, capacity, and IOPS to meet strict enterprise service-level agreements.
• Automation & Orchestration: Engineer Infrastructure as Code (IaC) pipelines utilizing APIs, Python, and REST to automate LUN provisioning, zoning, and capacity tiering.
• Resiliency & Data Protection: Design continuous replication strategies, active-active datacenter mirroring (e.g., SRDF/Metro), and immutable, air-gapped backup vaulting for comprehensive ransomware mitigation.
• Performance Tuning & Analytics: Perform deep-packet and protocol-level (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, SMB) troubleshooting to eliminate I/O bottlenecks in hyper-converged and highly virtualized host environments.
• Lifecycle Management & Capacity Planning: Direct predictive analytics and capacity modeling to drive hardware refresh cycles, cloud tiering, and data lifecycle management.
• Compliance & Security: Enforce Zero Trust security postures by implementing storage-level encryption at rest/in-flight, RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), and STIGs across classified and unclassified domains.
Required qualifications to be successful in this role:
All roles require an active TS/SCI with Poly
Entry Level:
• Education:
o High School Diploma/GED with 4 years of relevant experience,
o Associates Degree with 2 years of relevant experience,
o or Bachelor's Degree with 0 years of relevant experience
• Technical Knowledge: Basic understanding of networking, operating systems (Linux/Windows), and virtual environments (VMware).
• Soft Skills: Strong attention to detail, eagerness to learn enterprise storage concepts, and good communication skills for collaborating with other IT teams.
Junior Level/Moderate:
• Education:
o High School Diploma/GED with 6 years of relevant experience,
o Associates Degree with 4 years of relevant experience,
o Bachelor's Degree with 2 years of relevant experience,
o or Masters Degree with 0 years of relevant experience
• Technical Knowledge: Basic understanding of Storage Area Networks (SAN), Network-Attached Storage (NAS), and RAID configurations.
• Collaboration: Ability to work alongside systems administrators, database administrators, and network engineers to resolve infrastructure incidents.
Mid-Level/Complex:
• Education:
o High School Diploma/GED with 8 years of relevant experience,
o Associates Degree with 6 years of relevant experience,
o Bachelor's Degree with 4 years of relevant experience,
o or Masters Degree with 2 years of relevant experience,
o or PhD with 0 years of relevant experience
• Storage Protocols: Deep understanding of SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMB) protocols.
• Operating Systems: Solid foundational knowledge of Linux, Windows Server, and hypervisors (e.g., VMware vSphere) to effectively troubleshoot storage mounting and connectivity.
• Backup Solutions: Familiarity with enterprise backup architectures (e.g., Veeam, Commvault, or Avamar).
• Scripting: Basic to intermediate proficiency in Python, Bash, or PowerShell
Senior Level/Exceptionally Complex:
• Education:
o High School Diploma/GED with 10 years of relevant experience,
o Associates Degree with 8 years of relevant experience,
o Bachelor's Degree with 6 years of relevant experience,
o or Masters Degree with 4 years of relevant experience,
o or PhD with 2 years of relevant experience
• Deep Domain Knowledge: Exceptional troubleshooting capability within complex multi-vendor ecosystems (e.g., EMC, IBM, NetApp, Pure Storage).
• Certifications: Industry-standard architect-level credentials are highly preferred (e.g., NetApp Certified Data Administrator/Architect, EMCIE, SNIA Certified Storage Architect)
SME Level/Exceptionally Complex:
• Education:
o High School Diploma/GED with 12 years of relevant experience,
o Associates Degree with 10 years of relevant experience,
o Bachelor's Degree with 8 years of relevant experience,
o or Masters Degree with 6 years of relevant experience,
o or PhD with 4 years of relevant experience
• Domain Expertise: Deep hands-on proficiency with tier-1 arrays (e.g., Pure Storage, Dell PowerMax/Unity, NetApp ONTAP, IBM FlashSystem) and data protection platforms (e.g., Rubrik, Commvault, Veeam).
• Protocol & Fabrics: Mastery of Fibre Channel (FC) SAN fabric routing, NVMe, and enterprise NAS protocols.
• Cloud & Virtualization: Exceptional understanding of storage integration with VMware vSphere, Kubernetes persistent volumes, and native cloud storage services.
CGI is required by law in some jurisdictions to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation range for this role. The determination of this range includes various factors not limited to skill set, level, experience, relevant training, and licensure and certifications. To support the ability to reward for merit-based performance, CGI typically does not hire individuals at or near the top of the range for their role. Compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range for this role in the U.S. is $89,600.00 - $204,000.00.
CGI Federal's benefits are offered to eligible professionals on their first day of employment to include:
. Competitive compensation
. Comprehensive insurance options
. Matching contributions through the 401(k) plan and the share purchase plan
. Paid time off for vacation, holidays, and sick time
. Paid parental leave
. Learning opportunities and tuition assistance
. Wellness and Well-being programs
#CGIFederalJob
#LI-LB1
#ClearanceJobs
#CGIInternationalSecurity
What you can expect from us:
Together, as owners, let's turn meaningful insights into action.
Life at CGI is rooted in ownership, teamwork, respect and belonging. Here, you'll reach your full potential because...
You are invited to be an owner from day 1 as we work together to bring our Dream to life. That's why we call ourselves CGI Partners rather than employees. We benefit from our collective success and actively shape our company's strategy and direction.
Your work creates value. You'll develop innovative solutions and build relationships with teammates and clients while accessing global capabilities to scale your ideas, embrace new opportunities, and benefit from expansive industry and technology expertise.
You'll shape your career by joining a company built to grow and last. You'll be supported by leaders who care about your health and well-being and provide you with opportunities to deepen your skills and broaden your horizons.
Come join our team-one of the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world.
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, ethnicity, ancestry, color, sex, religion, creed, age, national origin, citizenship status, disability, pregnancy, medical condition, military and veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and gender expression, familial status or responsibilities, reproductive health decisions, political affiliation, genetic information, height, weight, or any other legally protected status or characteristics to the extent required by applicable federal, state, and/or local laws where we do business.
CGI provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. If you need an accommodation to apply for a job in the U.S., please email the CGI U.S. Employment Compliance mailbox at US_Employment_Compliance@cgi.com. You will need to reference the Position ID of the position in which you are interested. Your message will be routed to the appropriate recruiter who will assist you. Please note, this email address is only to be used for those individuals who need an accommodation to apply for a job. Emails for any other reason or those that do not include a Position ID will not be returned.
We make it easy to translate military experience and skills! Click here to be directed to our site that is dedicated to veterans and transitioning service members.
All CGI offers of employment in the U.S. are contingent upon the ability to successfully complete a background investigation. Background investigation components can vary dependent upon specific assignment and/or level of US government security clearance held. Dependent upon role and/or federal government security clearance requirements, and in accordance with applicable laws, some background investigations may include a credit check. CGI will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrests and conviction records in accordance with all local regulations and ordinances.
CGI will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applican