Defensive Cybersecurity Engineer/Blue Team

The Mitre Corporation • Hollymead, VA

18h • $158,800 - $238,200 • Onsite

About The Position

MITRE’s Defensive Cyber Operations department seeks a cybersecurity engineer to support mission-driven cybersecurity initiatives for government sponsors. The role combines hands-on defensive operations with advanced research and applied development in AI-enabled cybersecurity. The successful candidate will help design, implement, and evaluate defensive capabilities using machine learning, large language models, autonomous systems, and advanced analytics to protect mission-critical systems and national infrastructure. The position is onsite five days a week and requires an active U.S. Government-issued Top Secret/SCI clearance with polygraph; candidates must be U.S. citizens and eligible for access to classified information.

Requirements

• Typically, at least 8 years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree, 6 years with a master’s degree, or 3 years with a Ph.D.; an equivalent combination of related education and work experience is also accepted.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
• Significant experience with Splunk and cloud computing.
• Knowledge of cybersecurity operations and principles and their application.
• Experience in at least one of the following: Security Operations Centers (SOCs), threat hunting, detection engineering, malware analysis, or cyber deception.
• Must have an active U.S. Government-issued Top Secret/SCI clearance with polygraph and meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information; U.S. citizenship is required.
• Must work onsite five days a week.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Elastic/ELK.
• Experience using MITRE ATT&CK®.
• Experience using or developing AI tools and techniques for defensive cyber operations.

Responsibilities

• Combine cybersecurity domain expertise and data science skills to improve adversary detection, network defense, and Security Operations Center processes.
• Develop AI-enabled cybersecurity tools for anomaly detection, behavioral analytics, malware analysis, and adversary emulation.
• Research emerging AI techniques, including machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, and reinforcement learning, and assess their applicability to defensive cyber missions.
• Use MITRE ATT&CK® to hunt adversaries and build TTP-based defenses.
• Create security analytics and dashboards using Splunk or Elastic through detection engineering, and integrate new data feeds.
• Automate container environments using continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD).
• Act as a trusted advisor to the Federal Government.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior