Federal Security Platforms Lead (Principal Information Security Engineer)

Zscaler•McLean, VA

9h•Onsite

About The Position

About Zscaler Zscaler accelerates digital transformation so our customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. Our cloud native Zero Trust Exchange platform protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. Here, impact in your role matters more than title and trust is built on results. We believe in transparency and value constructive, honest debate —we’re focused on getting to the best ideas, faster. We build high-performing teams that can make an impact quickly and with high quality. To do this, we are building a culture of execution centered on customer obsession, collaboration, ownership and accountability. We value high-impact, high-accountability with a sense of urgency where you’re enabled to do your best work and embrace your potential. If you’re driven by purpose, thrive on solving complex challenges and want to make a positive difference on a global scale, we invite you to bring your talents to Zscaler and help shape the future of cybersecurity. We are looking for a Federal Security Platforms Lead (Principal Information Security Engineer) to join our Enterprise Security team. This is a full-time onsite role based in Crystal City, VA, reporting to the Director of Federal Security Operations. You will build and own the security detection and response platform for a new, dedicated DoD/DoW IL6 cloud environment. In this role, you will architect Splunk Enterprise Security from the ground up, establish critical data pipelines and deliver high-fidelity automation to enable real-time threat response. Partnering across Zscaler, you will ensure our 24/7 federal security operations remain scalable, compliant, and mission-ready.

Requirements

US Citizenship and an active U.S. Secret Security Clearance (Top Secret preferred), with a willingness to participate in an on-call rotation (nights and weekends)
8+ years of security engineering or operations in FedRAMP/DoD environments, supporting 24/7 mission needs
Experienced in architecting, administering, and optimizing clustered Splunk Enterprise Security deployments, including ingestion pipelines and CIM normalization across GovCloud/Secret regions
Skilled at configuring data retention, encryption, and indexer/search head clustering for resilient, compliant log management aligned to FedRAMP and DoD CC SRG
Proficient in SPL to build and tune correlation searches, dashboards, and risk-based alerting; partnered with IR to improve signal quality and reduce false positives

Nice To Haves

Experience operating in U.S. government cloud regions (AWS GovCloud/Secret; Azure Government/Azure DoD/Azure Secret) with DoDIL6 constraints
Have or be able to obtain advanced DoD 8140 DCWF certification
Expertise automating security workflows with Python or PowerShell, including SOAR playbooks, enrichment pipelines, and CI/CD for content deployment

Responsibilities

Architect, implement, and optimize Splunk Enterprise Security from the ground up, including ingestion pipelines, CIM normalization, indexer/search head clustering, and HA/DR across DoD IL6 environment
Design, build, and tune high-fidelity detections mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and DoD threat profiles while managing the full content lifecycle, QA, version control, and false-positive reduction
Define telemetry requirements and lead onboarding for cloud, endpoint, identity, and network sources to ensure data quality, normalization, and enrichment to close coverage gaps
Develop SOAR automation and triage workflows, deliver analyst-facing dashboards and hunt workspaces, and partner with Incident Response for operationalization and continuous improvement
Operate the SIEM/SOAR platform for a 24/7 environment and ensure configurations, retention, encryption, and RBAC align with FedRAMP, DoD CC SRG, and DISA STIGs