Defensive Cybersecurity Engineer/Blue Team

The MITRE Corporation • Huntsville, AL

16d • $158,800 - $238,200 • Onsite

About The Position

MITRE's Defensive Cyber Operations department is seeking creative people to work collaboratively with our staff of cybersecurity engineers in the fields of defensive cyber operations, threat hunt, detection engineering, and cyber deception and adversary engagement with increasing emphasis in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support mission-driven cybersecurity initiatives for government sponsors. This role blends hands-on defensive operations with advanced research and applied development in AI-enabled cybersecurity. The successful candidate will have deep Splunk Enterprise expertise, experience with scripting, and a strong understanding of MITRE ATT&CK® and its application to threat detection, threat hunting, and adversary behavior analysis.

Requirements

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Significant experience with Splunk, including both backend administration and detection/content development.
• Experience developing scripts and integrating APIs to automate cyber operations and security workflows.
• Knowledge of cyber security operations and cyber security principles and their application
• Demonstrated experience conducting proactive cyber threat hunting across enterprise environments.
• Strong understanding of the MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting technical analysis to both technical and executive audiences.
• Applicants selected for this position will be subject to a government clearance security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.
• Active Top Secret/SCI Clearance with poly
• U.S Citizenship is required

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting or developing capabilities within the Augury platform
• Experience developing advanced Splunk analytics, detections, dashboards, and security content.
• Experience with cyber automation, orchestration, and Security Operations Center (SOC) modernization initiatives
• Experience with Elastic/ELK
• Experience using MITRE ATT&CK®
• Experience using or developing AI tools and techniques for defensive cyber operations

Responsibilities

• Combining cybersecurity domain expertise and contemporary data science skills to enhance adversary detection, network defense, and threat hunting process improvement.
• Developing AI-enabled cybersecurity tools for anomaly detection, behavioral analytics, malware analysis, and adversary emulation.
• Designing, developing, and optimizing advanced threat hunting methodologies, Splunk detections, analytics, and dashboards to improve cyber defense capabilities.
• Developing scripts, APIs, and automation solutions that enhance cyber operations, improve analyst workflows, and integrate security platforms.
• Researching emerging AI techniques (e.g., machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, reinforcement learning) and assessing their applicability to defensive cyber missions.
• Using MITRE ATT&CK® to hunt the adversary and build TTP-based defenses.
• Using detection engineering to create security analytics and dashboards in Splunk or Elastic and integrating new data feeds
• Automating container environments via continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD)
• Acting as a trusted advisor to the Federal Government

Benefits

• competitive benefits
• exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth
• a culture of innovation that embraces adaptability, collaboration, technical excellence, and people in partnership

What This Job Offers

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