Automation Architect

Empower AI•Camp Springs, MD

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Overview Empower AI is AI for government. Empower AI gives federal agency leaders the tools to elevate the potential of their workforce with a direct path for meaningful transformation. Headquartered in Reston, Va., Empower AI leverages three decades of experience solving complex challenges in Health, Defense, and Civilian missions. Our proven Empower AI Platform® provides a practical, sustainable path for clients to achieve transformation that is true to who they are, what they do, how they work, with the resources they have. The result is a government workforce that is exponentially more creative and productive. For more information, visit www.Empower.ai . Empower AI is proud to be recognized as a 2024 Military Friendly Employer by Viqtory, the publisher of G.I. Jobs. This designation reflects the company’s commitment to hiring and supporting active-duty and veteran employees. Responsibilities The Automation Architect Lead ( Auto Lead ) provides enterprise-level automation and operational management of leadership for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) information technology (IT) infrastructure. USCIS has over 27,000 Government employees and contractors working at over 250 offices worldwide. The USCIS Enterprise Infrastructure Division (EID) of the Office of Information Technology (OIT) provides IT infrastructure engineering, design, testing, implementation and operational support services for all USCIS enterprise components, to include networks, server rooms, data storage, telecommunications, video conferencing services and infrastructure security. The Auto Lead directly supports EID. This position will guide hyper-automation, unified orchestration, and AIOps across the federal IT environments at USCIS. This role serves as the strategic architect for automation and predictive operations, transforming infrastructure and operations from manual, reactive workflows to governed, automated, and predictive service delivery models. The Auto Lead designs and implements Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), workflow orchestration, and AI-driven predictive analytics solutions that reduce manual intervention, improve reliability, and strengthen mission resilience. This position plays a vital role in integrating automation with ITSM/ITOM platforms such as ServiceNow, enabling end-to-end task execution and self-healing capabilities across hosting, cloud, unified communications, and platform operations. This is a high-visibility, enterprise-impact role that directly supports modernization, efficiency, and operational risk reduction objectives.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field (or equivalent experience).
10+ years of experience in similar enterprise IT operations, automation engineering, or DevSecOps.
5+ years leading automation initiatives in similar large-scale federal or enterprise environments.
Demonstrated experience with: Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM, etc.)
ITSM/ITOM platforms (e.g., ServiceNow)
Workflow orchestration platforms
Monitoring and observability tools
Hands-on experience designing automation runbooks and remediation workflows.
Experience integrating automation with change management and governance processes.
Ability to obtain and maintain required federal security clearance.

Nice To Haves

Experience implementing AIOps, anomaly detection, or predictive analytics solutions in production environments.
Familiarity with AI/ML frameworks and time-series forecasting models.
Experience with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platforms.
Experience supporting hybrid and multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
Knowledge of ITIL practices and Agile delivery methodologies.
Experience modernizing legacy infrastructure environments into automated, cloud-integrated platforms.
Strong executive communication skills with the ability to translate complex automation initiatives into mission and business outcomes.

Responsibilities

Enterprise Hyper-Automation Strategy Define and execute the automation roadmap across infrastructure, cloud, and platform operations.
Identify and prioritize high-impact automation and predictive use cases based on operational data and incident trends.
Establish enterprise automation standards, guardrails, and governance models.
Unified Task Orchestration Architect and implement unified orchestration workflows across IT domains (hosting, UC, cloud, databases, storage).
Integrate automation pipelines with ITSM/ITOM platforms to enable governed, end-to-end workflow execution.
Design closed-loop automation models that connect monitoring signals to automated remediation and validation.
AIOps & Predictive Intelligence Implement anomaly detection and predictive analytics models to forecast infrastructure failures.
Integrate predictive models with automated remediation runbooks and approval workflows.
Lead development of self-healing infrastructure capabilities to reduce MTTR and prevent recurring incidents.
Infrastructure Automation (IaC & DevSecOps) Implement Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM, etc.) for consistent, repeatable provisioning.
Integrate CI/CD pipeline orchestration into operational workflows.
Embed security controls, compliance validation, and audit logging within automation pipelines.
Performance & Metrics Establish measurable KPIs for automation effectiveness (incident reduction, MTTR improvement, automation rate).
Provide executive-level reporting on automation ROI and operational risk reduction.
Continuously optimize automation workflows to improve efficiency and resilience.