Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Lead

The Bison Group LLC•Washington, DC

20h•$160,000 - $180,000

About The Position

Lead Cisco ISE and C2C policy engineering, including designing, creating, testing, implementing, documenting, and sustaining authentication and authorization policies, profiles, identity-source sequences, endpoint groups, profiling rules, posture policies, and exception workflows. Engineer and support enterprise access-control methods, C2C enforcement and remediation, and integrations with identity, certificate, endpoint, security, vulnerability-management, SIEM, network, and other approved services. Provide Tier 3 troubleshooting and incident support for complex ISE, authentication, authorization, certificate, profiling, posture, endpoint, CoA, RADIUS, TACACS+, and network-device issues. Maintain the health and resiliency of distributed ISE deployments and support lifecycle activities such as upgrades, patches, certificate renewals, policy migrations, node recovery, backup validation, and maintenance. Develop technical standards, change controls, implementation and rollback plans, and operational documentation. Lead onboarding and service-improvement efforts, mentor teammates, guide engineering and operations teams, coordinate Cisco TAC cases, and prepare escalation packages, root-cause analyses, and after-action reports.

Requirements

Active TS/SCI clearance with ability to obtain CI Polygraph prior to start.
Current DoW 8140/8570-aligned IAT Level II certification, such as CompTIA Security+, or ability to obtain it prior to start.
Current Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification.
Current Cisco Certified Specialist – Security Identity Management Implementation credential.
At least 5 years of hands-on Cisco ISE engineering or administration experience in an enterprise or mission environment.
Demonstrated experience designing, creating, testing, and sustaining Cisco ISE authentication and authorization policies.
Demonstrated experience with 802.1X, EAP-TLS, MAB, RADIUS, TACACS+, CoA, dynamic VLAN assignment, dACLs, SGTs, and enterprise network-access-control concepts.
Demonstrated experience integrating Cisco ISE with Active Directory, PKI/certificate services, switches, and endpoint-management or endpoint-security platforms.
Experience troubleshooting complex wired access-control issues across Cisco ISE, switches, endpoints, identity services, and certificate infrastructure.
Experience with Cisco ISE distributed deployments, including PAN, secondary Administration node, PSN, Monitoring, pxGrid, node registration, replication, backup/restore, and operational health monitoring.
Familiarity with ticketing systems, change-management processes, incident management, problem management, and customer-facing operational support.
Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively with network, security, endpoint, identity, and service-management teams.
Meet one of the stated education-and-experience combinations: High School/GED plus 9 years; Associate degree plus 7 years; Bachelor’s degree plus 5 years; Master’s degree plus 3 years; or PhD plus 1 year.

Nice To Haves

Cisco Certified Network Professional Security (CCNP Security) or current equivalent Cisco security professional certification.
Cisco Certified Network Professional Enterprise (CCNP Enterprise) certification.
Cisco Implementing and Configuring Cisco Identity Services Engine (SISE) training or equivalent demonstrated ISE engineering experience.
Cisco DoD Comply-to-Connect (C2C) training or demonstrated experience implementing C2C-aligned ISE capabilities.
CompTIA Network+, CySA+, CASP+, or other relevant network/security certifications.
Experience with Cisco Catalyst Center, Cisco SD-Access, TrustSec, pxGrid, Cisco Secure Client, Cisco Secure Firewall, and/or network segmentation technologies.
Experience with scripting and automation using Python, REST APIs, Ansible, PowerShell, or similar tools.
Experience supporting large-scale DoW, federal, intelligence-community, or other regulated enterprise environments.

Responsibilities

Design, create, test, implement, document, and sustain ISE authentication and authorization policies, profiles, identity-source sequences, endpoint groups, profiling rules, posture policies, and exception workflows.
Engineer and support 802.1X, EAP-TLS, MAB, RADIUS, TACACS+, guest and contractor access, certificate-based authentication, and network-device administration.
Develop C2C enforcement and remediation workflows using dynamic VLAN assignment, downloadable ACLs, Security Group Tags, Change of Authorization, reauthentication, restricted-access controls, quarantine actions, and endpoint-remediation workflows.
Integrate and sustain ISE connections with Active Directory, PKI and certificate authorities, endpoint-management tools, endpoint-security platforms, vulnerability-management tools, SIEMs, pxGrid clients, switches, VPN infrastructure, and other approved security services.
Provide Tier 3 troubleshooting and incident support; analyze ISE Live Logs, session traces, alarms, packet captures, switch logs, support bundles, and endpoint data to identify root causes and corrective actions.
Administer and troubleshoot distributed ISE deployments, including PAN, secondary Administration node, PSNs, MnT, pxGrid, node groups, replication, backups, restores, certificates, performance, capacity, and disaster-recovery procedures.
Support ISE upgrades, patches, certificate renewals, policy migrations, technology refresh, node recovery, backup validation, and approved maintenance activities.
Develop implementation, test, validation, rollback, and post-change review plans.
Develop and maintain policy naming standards, configuration baselines, test procedures, implementation checklists, rollback procedures, SOPs, and knowledge articles.
Review proposed policy changes for operational impact, dependencies, and access risk.
Support pilot efforts, site onboarding, phased rollout, transition to operations, recurring-incident reduction, and continuous improvement of C2C policy and service delivery.
Mentor teammates, provide technical guidance to engineering and operations teams, coordinate Cisco TAC cases, and produce escalation packages, root-cause analyses, and after-action reports.