Solutions Consultant

Posting Title

Solutions Consultant

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Location

CO - Golden

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Position Type

Regular

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Hours Per Week

40

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Working at NREL

NREL is located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado is the nation's primary laboratory for energy systems research and development.

Join NREL, where world-class scientists, engineers, and experts are accelerating energy innovation through breakthrough research and systems integration. From our mission to our collaborative culture, NREL stands out in the research community for its commitment to an affordable and secure energy future. Spanning foundational science to applied systems engineering and analysis, we focus on solving complex challenges to deliver advanced, secure, reliable, and cost-effective energy solutions. Our work helps strengthen U.S. industries, support job creation, and promote national economic growth.

At NREL, you’ll find a mission-driven environment supported by state-of-the-art facilities, multidisciplinary research teams, and strong collaborations with industry, academia, and other national laboratories. We offer robust professional development opportunities, and a competitive benefits package designed to support your career and well-being.

Job Description

The Solutions Consultant will be a primary point of contact for National Security Research Office (NSRO) Team to coordinate and assist in providing IT solutions and support. This position will work closely with research and operations staff to define and scope and coordinate needs working closely with Cyber Security and other ITS groups to ensure compliance and adherence to standards. The Solutions Consultant will support, troubleshoot, and advise in the operational areas of desktop, storage, compute, cyber, and networking or coordinate with subject matter experts within Information Technology Services (ITS) and the Mission-specific Centers when necessary.  Application assistance and operations will be expected for research applications outside of applications support by ITS. Small amounts of Windows, Linux, and network administration will be required to support operations and project initiatives.

Job duties and responsibilities of the position: Duties shall include, but not be limited to:

• Works with Mission-related staff to scope needs, provide solution, and support.  
• Create and define standard work flow processes for in-take and feedback to clients.
• Performs network support including, but not limited to, checking network connections, enabling ports, and troubleshooting connections between fixed equipment and switches.
• Document Telecom Room cabling and laboratory point drops, and maintain comprehensive system configuration documentation as needed.
• Works within ITS teams to ensure that proposed solutions adhere to ITS standards, best practices, and are supportable.
• Works within the Operations Support and Recovery team to provide incident response, troubleshooting, administration, and operational support for ITS supported systems.
• Ensures items being requested by customers triggers Cyber input and intervention as needed, supports Cyber assessment by gathering and providing information
• Works with customers to maintain optimal performance and functioning of supported systems.
• Cultivates relationships with teams internal and external to the ITS required for delivery of services
• Develops and enhances the skills necessary to adequately provide operational support for the organization.
• Dedicated to ensuring system availability and integrity by actively contributing to incident response situations.
• Adheres to ITS standards and processes and applies those standards to supported systems.
• Configure and deploy virtual desktop systems;  Work with end users to determine requirements and appropriately spec and configure systems based on these requirements
• Handle network connectivity and access configuration requests such as VPN by engaging ITS and cyber resources and ITS liaison to efficiently complete and verify completion requests on behalf of ESIF research projects.
• Support interface and configuration for research projects to interface data services, co-simulation with remote sites, servers and enterprise virtual machine environments.
• Support data handshake and connectivity for Digital Real Time Simulators (computers) as well as large dataset handling from internal, external, or cloud repositories.
• Dedication to support and implementation of research work with focus on meeting research milestones and deadlines.
• Ensure network safety and security by administering required practices and approaches to implementation of research setups.

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Basic Qualifications

Relevant Bachelor's Degree and 5 or more years of experience or equivalent relevant education/experience. Or, relevant Master's Degree and 3 or more years of experience or equivalent relevant education/experience. Or, relevant PhD or equivalent relevant education/experience. Complete understanding and wide application of principles, concepts and techniques in specific field. General knowledge of related IS disciplines. Strong leadership and project management skills. Skilled in analytical techniques, practices and problem solving. Advanced programming, design and analysis abilities with various computer software programs and information systems.

* Must meet educational requirements prior to employment start date.

Additional Required Qualifications

• Must have an active clearance or have the ability to obtain a DOE Q (DOD TS) level security clearance is required.

• DOE Q or TS

  Clearance: Must be able to obtain and maintain a DOE security clearance at the DOE (Q) or DoD (TS) level.  

  Eligibility requirements: To obtain a clearance, an individual must be at least 18 years of age; U.S. citizenship is required except in very limited circumstances. See DOE O 472.2A  for additional information.
• HSPD-12 Must be able to obtain and maintain an HSPD-12 credential for a position as required by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which includes a favorable background investigation of the appropriate tier.
• Thorough knowledge of supporting and operating Linux servers, particularly RHEL 8 and newer.
• Ability to support a multitude of Linux desktop systems and troubleshoot and resolve end-user issues.
• Thorough knowledge of supporting and operating Windows servers and endpoints, including Windows 11.
• Availability to work nights and weekends as needed.
• Excellent troubleshooting skills.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Proven customer service success.
• Basic skills in scripting using bash, Powershell, or Python

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of Rancher/Kubernetes and containerization.

• Thorough knowledge of supporting and operating Linux servers, particularly SLES 15 and newer, and distributions in an enterprise environment.

• Some basic knowledge in the operation and administration of IIS.

• Configuration and support of RSA appliances and tokens

• Knowledge or experience using F5 technologies, specifically as a web application firewall. 

• Knowledge or experience supporting cloud services including Amazon Web Services and Azure

• Experience and knowledge in use of 0MQ brokering

• Experience using VMware Vsphere and Vcenter

• Experience supporting and configuring PHP

• Experience supporting Java and modifying Java options

• Experience supporting Tomcat

• Experience supporting and administrating version control products like GitHub and Svn

• Experience generating CSR’s and installing the resultant SSL certificates.

• Experience utilizing Jenkins to facilitate deployment of sites from developer’s code repositories.

• Ability to support Drupal developers including assistance with updating production sites, Drupal environment maintenance activities, deploying new sites, collaborating on configurations, and associated MySQL work.

• Experience using Ansible for automation and configuration management

• General knowledge of cyber security best practices to maintain a secure computing environment.

• Experience supporting copper and fiber cabling infrastructures

• Experience troubleshooting basic wired and wireless client connection issues 

• Experience working with layer 2 network switches – Cisco and Mellanox/Cumulus preferred

• Experience supporting and troubleshooting Apache web environments including working with Apache configurations

• Project and process management experience

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Job Application Submission Window

The anticipated closing window for application submission is up to 30 days and may be extended as needed.

Annual Salary Range (based on full-time 40 hours per week)

Job Profile: IT Professional III / Annual Salary Range: $81,500 - $146,700

NREL takes into consideration a candidate’s education, training, and experience, expected quality and quantity of work, required travel (if any), external market and internal value, including seniority and merit systems, and internal pay alignment when determining the salary level for potential new employees. In compliance with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, a potential new employee’s salary history will not be used in compensation decisions.

Benefits Summary

Benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance; short*- and long-term disability insurance; pension benefits*; 403(b) Employee Savings Plan with employer match*; life and accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) insurance; personal time off (PTO) and sick leave; paid holidays; and tuition reimbursement*. NREL employees may be eligible for, but are not guaranteed, performance-, merit-, and achievement- based awards that include a monetary component. Some positions may be eligible for relocation expense reimbursement. Limited-term positions are not eligible for long-term disability or tuition reimbursement.

* Based on eligibility rules

Badging Requirement

NREL is subject to Department of Energy (DOE) access restrictions. All employees must also be able to obtain and maintain a federal Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card as required by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12), which includes a favorable background investigation.

Drug Free Workplace

NREL is committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace in accordance with the federal Drug-Free Workplace Act and complies with federal laws prohibiting the possession and use of illegal drugs. Under federal law, marijuana remains an illegal drug.

If you are offered employment at NREL, you must pass a pre-employment drug test prior to commencing employment. Unless prohibited by state or local law, the pre-employment drug test will include marijuana. If you test positive on the pre-employment drug test, your offer of employment may be withdrawn.

Submission Guidelines

Please note that in order to be considered an applicant for any position at NREL you must submit an application form for each position for which you believe you are qualified. Applications are not kept on file for future positions. Please include a cover letter and resume with each position application.

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Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard basis of age (40 and over), color, disability, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, domestic partner status, military or veteran status, national origin/ancestry, race, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding), sexual orientation, and any other applicable status protected by federal, state, or local laws.

Reasonable Accommodations

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