Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Lead

The Bison Group LLC•Landover, MD

19h•$160,000 - $180,000

About The Position

The Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Lead leads ISE and C2C policy engineering, enterprise access-control implementation, integrations, Tier 3 troubleshooting, platform health and resiliency, lifecycle activities, technical standards, onboarding, operational improvement, and escalation management. The role designs, tests, implements, documents, and sustains authentication and authorization policies and related workflows, and provides technical guidance to engineering and operations teams. The position supports a distributed ISE deployment and its integrations with identity, certificate, endpoint, network, and security services. It also supports upgrades and maintenance, develops change and implementation controls, and contributes to rollout planning and transition to operations. The Bison Group, LLC offers benefit options including medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance, as well as accrued PTO including vacation, sick leave, and holidays. Compensation is based on a market-informed range; the posting does not specify the range amount.

Requirements

Active TS/SCI clearance and ability to obtain a 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 and collaborate 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, 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, authorization profiles, identity source sequences, endpoint groups, profiling rules, posture policies, and exception workflows.
Engineer and support enterprise access-control methods, including 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.
Integrate and sustain ISE connections with Active Directory, PKI and certificate authorities, endpoint-management and endpoint-security platforms, vulnerability-management tools, SIEMs, pxGrid clients, switches, VPN infrastructure, and other approved security services.
Provide Tier 3 troubleshooting and incident support for authentication, authorization, certificate, profiling, posture, endpoint, CoA, RADIUS, TACACS+, and network-device issues; analyze logs, traces, alarms, packet captures, support bundles, and endpoint data to identify causes and corrective actions.
Administer and troubleshoot the distributed ISE deployment, including PAN, secondary Administration node, PSNs, MnT, pxGrid, node groups, replication, backups, restores, certificates, performance, capacity, and disaster recovery.
Support ISE upgrades, patches, certificate renewals, policy migrations, technology refresh, node recovery, backup validation, and approved maintenance; 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 changes for operational impact, dependencies, and access risk.
Support C2C pilots, site onboarding, phased rollout, transition to operations, recurring-incident reduction, and continuous improvement of C2C policy and service delivery.
Mentor teammates and provide technical guidance to engineering and operations teams; coordinate Cisco TAC cases and produce escalation packages, root-cause analyses, and after-action reports.