Principal Targeting Analyst-TS Required

SixGen, Inc. • Fort Meade, MD

9d • Hybrid

About The Position

SIXGEN is seeking a Principal Targeting Analyst to build and lead an organic targeting and collection capability that strengthens our offensive cyber, red-team, and adversary-emulation missions. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an analyst-engineer hybrid who enjoys solving hard collection problems, developing targets from a cold start, and turning operational experience into automated, mission-ready capability. As a Principal Targeting Analyst, you'll pair deep OSINT and managed-attribution tradecraft with professional foreign-language proficiency, applied AI engineering, and real software-development ability. You'll partner with operators, engineers, and program teams to deliver timely targeting and access intelligence, mature SIXGEN's collection methodologies and tooling, and mentor analysts as the capability grows. Whether you're developing a target for a critical customer mission, automating collection at scale, or shaping the technical direction of a new capability, your operational credibility and technical judgment will help drive mission success across the organization.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Intelligence Studies, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent experience may be considered.
• 8+ years in intelligence analysis, targeting, OSINT collection, SIGINT, computer network exploitation, or a closely related discipline.
• Active TS/SCI clearance.
• Demonstrated expertise in OSINT tradecraft and managed attribution — persona creation and sustainment, deep and dark web collection, and OPSEC-compliant operational practice.
• Professional working proficiency (ILR 2+ / DLPT equivalent) in at least one mission-relevant foreign language. Mandarin Chinese strongly preferred; Russian, Farsi, Arabic, Korean, or Spanish also of high interest.
• Hands-on experience designing and deploying AI/LLM systems (agentic workflows, MCP servers, prompt and tool-use engineering, or retrieval-augmented pipelines) in an operational rather than experimental capacity.
• Proficiency in Python plus at least one of JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, or C/C++, with a track record of shipping and maintaining working tools, automated pipelines, and API integrations.
• Working knowledge of TCP/IP networking, DNS, and Linux and Windows operating system internals.
• Proven analytic tradecraft and the ability to produce finished intelligence and brief senior stakeholders under time-sensitive conditions.

Nice To Haves

• TS/SCI with CI polygraph; background supporting national security, intelligence community, or federal missions.
• Experience supporting offensive cyber operations, red-team engagements, or threat-emulation missions in a targeting or reconnaissance role.
• NSA Certified Exploitation Analyst, CNODP, or equivalent formal exploitation training.
• Cryptocurrency tracing and blockchain analytics experience with commercial tracing platforms.
• Experience standing up a new capability, unit, or program from zero, including SOP authorship, staffing, and leading small technical teams.

Responsibilities

• Conduct end-to-end target development against threat actors, and adversary infrastructure — from initial requirement through finished, decision-ready intelligence.
• Direct collection across the surface, deep, and dark web, closed forums, encrypted messaging platforms, and regional ecosystems beyond the coverage of commercial data sources.
• Perform authorized threat-actor engagement and elicitation; track initial-access brokers, exploit sellers, and access markets relevant to mission objectives.
• Conduct lawful analysis of credential, breach, and infostealer-log datasets, plus cryptocurrency tracing and target deanonymization, to identify access vectors and attribute infrastructure and operators.
• Deliver timely targeting updates and access intelligence in support of red-team and operational engagements; author finished intelligence and brief senior stakeholders and customers.
• Establish and govern durable, non-attributable personas spanning multiple regions — programmatic creation, automated aging and backstopping, sustainment, and OPSEC-safe access control.
• Design and maintain managed-attribution infrastructure: VPS estates, egress and redirector architectures, fingerprint control, and compartmented access paths.
• Manage OPSEC-compliant procurement and resourcing practices that support persona creation, infrastructure acquisition, and operational sustainment in a controlled, auditable manner.
• Author and enforce the governing SOPs and defensive operating standards that keep the capability secure and compliant.
• Design and deploy agentic AI workflows and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers that automate discovery, monitoring, collection, and enrichment across the capability.
• Apply LLMs and multimodal models to real-time translation, entity extraction, data labeling, and semantic summarization of text, image, and video at scale — with evaluation harnesses that keep automated output accurate and auditable.
• Build production-grade collection tooling, scrapers, and API integrations in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Bash; architect ingestion pipelines that move raw collection into structured, queryable platforms.
• Stand up cloud and serverless infrastructure (AWS or equivalent) and analyst-facing applications that reduce triage time and operational friction.
• Evaluate and unify commercial data sources for baseline collection while prototyping core tooling in-house, focusing engineering effort on hardening validated, high-value capabilities.
• Apply professional foreign-language proficiency to collect, exploit, and contextualize target-language material that machine translation alone cannot resolve, and operate personas credibly within target-language environments.
• Help architect, lead, and scale the capability over time — from initial standup through automation to a durable, standalone targeting function.
• Onboard, mentor, and develop analysts; serve as technical lead and primary briefer for cross-team and customer-facing engagements.

Benefits

• Employer-paid health insurance premiums (medical, dental, vision) for you and your family
• Employer-paid short/long term disability insurance and basic life/AD&D insurance
• 401K with a 4% employer contribution
• Professional development reimbursement options available (training, certification, education, etc)
• Flexible and remote work policies for most positions
• Flexible PTO and holiday schedule

What This Job Offers

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