Hands on Security Engineer/Architect

About the role In this role you will serve as the Security Engineering Architect for key cybersecurity systems supporting the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This role is ideal for someone with deep technical engineering skills, cloud and DevSecOps experience. You will also lead teams to develop and implement technical solutions to remediate vulnerabilities and other complex cybersecurity challenges. You need to have strong opinions and a solutions-oriented mindset to help the VA problem solve complex cybersecurity and IT challenges. You should be an expert at facilitating working sessions and have the ability to distill complex concepts into non-technical/common language. Strong hands-on implementation experience with most of NIST RMF, FISMA, FedRAMP. The role will focus on analyzing and recommending system security architectures, vulnerability mitigation, policy-driven compliance implementation, and full-lifecycle support for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs systems. Specifically targeting the following initiatives: Enhance accessibility for veterans navigating VA services Streamline digital processes and reduce complexity for end users Incorporate innovative technologies that improve the overall performance of VA’s systems What you'll do • Analyze complex technical findings and determine necessary resources needed to solve problem-sets across multiple cybersecurity and technical domains for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs systems • Lead teams to assess, develop and implement technical solutions to remediate vulnerabilities and other complex cybersecurity challenges • Facilitate working sessions and distill complex concepts into non-technical/common language • Assess complex technical findings and determine necessary resources needed to solve problem-sets across multiple cybersecurity and technical domains • Partner with technical teams to develop and implement technical solutions Design, build, and deploy secure cloud-native architectures and infrastructure components for VA information systems • Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines with integrated security scanning, policy enforcement, and remediation tools • Implement secure infrastructure as code/policy as code using tools such as Terraform/CloudFormation, including writing and implementing PaC scripts • Align security architectures with Federal Zero Trust strategy, VA directives, and OMB policies • Enable automation of system telemetry and analytics pipelines for cyber situational awareness • Provide engineering and technical analysis on behalf of Agency Authorizing Officials (AOs) for System Security Plans (SSPs), Risk Assessments, Security Controls Traceability Matrices (SCTMs), and POA&Ms • Support system authorization and compliance activities including continuous monitoring and system audits • Conduct regular and ad-hoc analysis of security control findings and develop and implement remediation strategies Qualifications • Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or technical equivalent • 10 years of relevant technical experience or 18 years of total experience in lieu of degree. • At least 2+ years acting as an ISSE or working as a security engineer for federal systems • Eight (8) years minimum of security engineering, DevSecOps, or cloud architecture experience • U.S. Citizenship and must be able to obtain a Public Trust security clearance from the U.S. Government • Specific Skills: • Rebellious attitude and willingness to challenge the status quo. • Expertise in securing platforms hosted in AWS GovCloud and Azure Government • Strong hands-on implementation experience with most of NIST RMF, FISMA, FedRAMP, and Zero Trust architecture. • Hands-on skills in IaC tools like Terraform and CI/CD tools such as GitLab/Jenkins, with ability to adopt new technologies if procured by the agency • Experience with network isolation tools such as Palo Alto Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW) and Juniper Mist Network Access Control (NAC) solutions or comparable • Excellent written and oral communication skills; ability to explain complex, technical information in easily understood terms; ability to brief Senior VA leadership regularly • Experience with IoT/IoMT security solutions is a plus The pay range for this role is: 100,000 - 110,000 USD per year (Remote/United States) Apply tot his job