Senior Cyber SETA Lead / Technical Advisor

Modern Technology Solutions Inc•Arlington, VA

10d•$200,000 - $230,000

About The Position

The Senior Cyber SETA Lead / Technical Advisor serves as an authoritative, trusted technical advisor to Government Program Executive Officers, Program Managers, and government leadership. In this Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA) role, the incumbent provides independent technical evaluation, acquisition stewardship, and engineering oversight to help ensure major defense acquisition programs, rapid warfighter prototyping initiatives, and joint cyber architectures deliver resilient capabilities against sophisticated, state-sponsored cyber adversaries. Operating as an objective extension of the government customer, the role bridges defense acquisition lifecycle governance, including FAR and OTA, with operational cyber threat mitigation. The Senior Cyber SETA Lead independently evaluates prime contractor engineering deliverables, software assurance pipelines, supply chain risk management postures, and threat emulation findings across multi-domain platforms such as aircraft, tactical networks, mission planning, cloud, and electronic warfare suites. The incumbent applies an offensive cyber mindset and extensive program leadership experience to validate government requirements, enforce defensible architectures, and help ensure taxpayer investments achieve maximum warfighter survivability.

Requirements

20 or more years of progressive experience in defense acquisition, systems engineering, military cyber operations, or technical advisory roles within the DoD and Intelligence Community.
Demonstrated experience in an engineering advisory, SETA, or government technical director capacity overseeing major defense programs or acquisition directorates.
Documented cybersecurity engineering oversight, program protection, or CISO-level technical direction for major defense platforms, such as ACAT I programs, military aircraft/avionics, tactical mission systems, or defense cloud infrastructures.
Thorough familiarity with the DoD acquisition lifecycle, defense budgeting (PPBE), requirements decomposition, and government oversight of major prime contracts and OTA consortia.
Hands-on technical knowledge of Defense-in-Depth principles, operating system and network hardening, zero-trust architectures, supply chain security, and enterprise host/network security monitoring such as HBSS/ESS and NSM.
Bachelor of Science in Engineering (Civil, Systems, Computer, or related technical engineering discipline) from an accredited institution.
Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility and a successfully completed counterintelligence or full-scope polygraph (TS/SCI with Polygraph required).

Nice To Haves

Prior service as a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Cyber Program Director, or Lead Systems Engineer for a major joint or service-level program, such as the F-35 Joint Program Office, Army RCCTO, ASA(ALT), or ARCYBER.
Understanding of modern AI model deployments, such as Fable and Astra, for cyber operations and automated threat discovery, along with experience evaluating Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) digital architectures.
Hands-on familiarity with military or national-agency cyber red team operations, such as NSA red team operations or USCYBERCOM mission teams, and ability to interpret technical exploitation findings for executive leadership.
Leadership experience establishing or advising regional or theater-level Defensive Cyber Operations, such as Regional Cyber Centers, Defensive Cyberspace Operations formations, or the Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE).
Track record advising on accelerated capability transitions, OTA-based prototyping, and joint inter-agency technology programs in partnership with research entities such as DARPA or service laboratories.
Commissioned military officer service with deployed tactical communications, signal, or cyber command experience.
Executive-level defense industry experience managing multi-program portfolios, profit and loss (P&L), and large-scale contractor teams.

Responsibilities

Act as the government's primary technical authority for evaluating prime contractor system architectures, engineering change proposals (ECPs), and security artifacts.
Provide objective advisory support across the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) lifecycle and DoD 5000/adaptive acquisition pathways.
Advise government leadership on technical direction, source selections, Statements of Work (SOW), System Requirements Documents (SRDs), Contract Data Requirements Lists (CDRLs), and vendor milestone reviews.
Assist in developing innovative contracting approaches using traditional FAR/DFARS mechanisms and Other Transaction Authority (OTA) rapid acquisition vehicles.
Monitor and evaluate prime vendor execution across software assurance, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), secure supply chain risk management (SCRM), and test and evaluation (T&E).
Assess contractor-submitted vulnerability remediation timelines, zero-day mitigation strategies, and continuous monitoring baselines.
Synthesize multi-source intelligence reports, NSA threat disclosures, and red team/adversary emulation results into actionable risk-mitigation roadmaps for program leadership.
Translate emerging adversarial vectors into engineering requirements and operational risk tradeoffs that inform government milestone and fielding decisions.
Prepare and deliver executive-level technical briefings, independent risk assessments, and decision memorandums for General/Flag Officers, PAEs, and congressional or DoD oversight bodies.
Facilitate technical synchronization across government stakeholders, operational cyber mission forces, service laboratories, and commercial vendor teams.