2027 Internship - Cybersecurity Engineer - Critical Infrastructure Protection

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory•Laurel, MD

12d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our mission in the Critical Infrastructure Protection Group is to protect the United States’ Infrastructure from persistent threats. Our group is a team of computer, system, and cybersecurity engineers creating game-changing capabilities that enable U.S. infrastructure to be robust in the face of complex and persistent threats. We design, build, hack, destroy, and invent to advance the state of the art. We are not satisfied with producing laboratory-only capabilities. We are continuously deploying our work in operational facilities to truly support our missions. Our group’s work protects U.S. citizens on a daily basis as they fly in our national airspace and ensures resources such as water and power are delivered continuously and safely. As a member of our team, you will both be able to access and shape premier research facilities such as our CYPRESS Laboratory. We champion creativity and boldness, empowering our staff to design, develop, and pursue in their own unique ways. We embrace a high-performing hybrid work environment, allowing our team to work flexibly so long as the job gets done. We are a caring and fun community that works hard because we love what we do and we want to make a difference. We are looking to find dedicated Cybersecurity Interns. In this role at APL, you will… Collaborate with sponsors to understand their missions and what it means to be successful Contribute to interdisciplinary teams designing and engineering cutting edge resilience solutions for cyber-physical systems. Develop proof-of-concepts and prototypes of novel control systems and technologies Conduct independent research and development to advance state of the art for cyber-physical systems to be self-aware, self-organized, self-healed, and self-optimized. Key research areas include virtualization, machine-to-machine trust, autonomic decision making. Reverse engineer control system network protocols Analyze control system hardware for cyber hardening Engage in red teaming exercises and adversary emulation Design, integrate, test and scale-up end-to-end cyber situational awareness capabilities Test cyber solutions on in-house hardware testbeds representing Critical infrastructure sectors

Requirements

Pursuing a Bachelors, Masters, or PhD in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Electrical & Computer Engineering.
3.0 GPA or above on a 4.0 scale
Intermediate skills and experience with scripting languages (Python, shell, etc.), Linux (command line)
Knowledge of IP networking, virtualization, Software Defined Networking (SDN), and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) protocols
Some experience with version control system, (preferably Git - including branching, pull‑requests, and basic conflict resolution)
U.S. citizenship status is required, subject to applicable laws

Nice To Haves

Hands-on cybersecurity skills and experience for Operational Technology (OT) and ICS are a plus
Experience with Agentic frameworks (ex: Langchain/LangGraph, PydanticAI, OpenAI Agents)
Strong interpersonal and communication skills (both verbal and written)
Experience with SIEMs (ELK, Splunk, etc.)
Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift)
Programming skills and experience with Matlab, C/C++, and JAVA
Interests in modeling and simulation, data mining and data science

Responsibilities

Collaborate with sponsors to understand their missions and what it means to be successful
Contribute to interdisciplinary teams designing and engineering cutting edge resilience solutions for cyber-physical systems.
Develop proof-of-concepts and prototypes of novel control systems and technologies
Conduct independent research and development to advance state of the art for cyber-physical systems to be self-aware, self-organized, self-healed, and self-optimized. Key research areas include virtualization, machine-to-machine trust, autonomic decision making.
Reverse engineer control system network protocols
Analyze control system hardware for cyber hardening
Engage in red teaming exercises and adversary emulation
Design, integrate, test and scale-up end-to-end cyber situational awareness capabilities
Test cyber solutions on in-house hardware testbeds representing Critical infrastructure sectors