Sustainment Lead

Position Summary

Avum is seeking a Sustainment Lead to oversee the reliability, operational health, and continuous improvement of our deployed systems. Working across engineering, operations, security, and customer support, this role ensures systems remain secure, stable, scalable, and aligned with customer needs. The ideal candidate is a technical leader who can guide teams through complex production issues, establish effective support processes, and balance daily operational priorities with long term system improvements.

Key Responsibilities

• Oversee the sustainment lifecycle for critical applications, platforms, and technology services.
• Lead production support, incident management, problem management, and root cause analysis.
• Establish and monitor service level agreements (SLAs), key performance indicators (KPIs), and system health metrics.
• Coordinate engineering resources to resolve defects, security vulnerabilities, performance issues, and technical debt.
• Develop and maintain processes for incident response, escalation, change management, and release support.
• Identify recurring operational issues and implement lasting corrective actions.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, Security, Infrastructure, and Customer Success teams to prioritize sustainment activities.
• Ensure systems have appropriate monitoring, documentation, testing, and support.
• Lead reviews following production incidents and translate findings into measurable improvements.
• Plan and oversee system upgrades, patches, retirement of outdated components, and platform modernization.
• Establish operational readiness criteria for new products and major releases.
• Support capacity planning, system resilience, disaster recovery, and business continuity initiatives.
• Provide leadership, mentoring, and technical guidance to sustainment and support engineers.
• Communicate system health, risks, incidents, and improvement plans to technical teams and executive stakeholders.

Compensation

The salary range for this position is $140,000 – $175,000 annually, with a target midpoint of $157,000. Actual compensation will be determined based on experience, qualifications, certifications, and geographic location. Avum offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical (Cigna), dental and vision (Principal), 401(k), PTO, education reimbursement, and certification reimbursement.

Work Environment & Requirements

• Hybrid/remote work environment with potential on-site requirements based on contract needs
• U.S. citizenship required
• Security clearance: Active Secret clearance required or ability to obtain

Equal Employment Opportunity

Avum, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected class under federal, state, or local law. Avum is committed to compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, and maintains an active Affirmative Action Plan.

Required Qualifications

• U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and/or maintain a U.S. government security clearance.
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Logistics, Operations Management, or a related technical discipline.
• At least 3 years of experience in technical leadership, sustainment, production operations, or engineering management.
• Strong understanding of cloud platforms, distributed systems, APIs, databases, and modern software development practices.
• Experience managing production incidents and leading root cause analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize competing operational and engineering needs.
• Experience with observability, monitoring, logging, alerting, and performance management.
• Strong understanding of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), version control, automated testing, and release management.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to explain technical issues to operational, management, and business audiences.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across engineering, product, security, and business teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Engineering, Logistics, Operations Management, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience using Jira for issue tracking or work management.
• Experience supporting applications built on the Appian platform.
• Knowledge of security, compliance, and vulnerability management practices.
• Experience leading teams through major platform migrations or modernization initiatives.