Senior Detection Engineer

Nightwing Intelligence Solutions•Sterling, VA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Nightwing is seeking a Senior Detection Engineer to support a U.S. Government contract providing onsite incident response to civilian Government agencies and critical asset owners experiencing cyberattacks. The contract team investigates breaches, characterizes their severity, develops mitigation plans, and assists with service restoration. The Senior Detection Engineer develops, validates, deploys, and tunes detection logic for proactive threat hunting across federal and critical infrastructure environments. The role combines threat hunting, adversary behavior analysis, and detection engineering to identify sophisticated threats, address visibility gaps, and improve detection effectiveness. The engineer turns threat intelligence, hunt findings, and incident response lessons into reliable behavioral analytics, investigative queries, and automation that support repeatable, scalable operations. Working across endpoint, network, identity, cloud, and application telemetry, the engineer selects detection methods based on available evidence and mission requirements. The position bridges threat hunters, technical delivery teams, system engineers, analytics developers, and data scientists, translating operational findings into validated detections, automation, sensing improvements, and actionable capability requirements. The role also provides technical leadership, reviews and mentors analysts, and helps develop detection engineering competencies, qualifications, training scenarios, and practical assessments.

Requirements

Must be a U.S. citizen.
Must have an active TS/SCI clearance.
Must be able to obtain DHS Suitability.
At least 10 years of directly relevant experience.
Senior-level experience in threat hunting, detection engineering, incident response, or closely related defensive cyber operations, including independent ownership of production detection content.
Strong command of hypothesis development, adversary behavior analysis, iterative investigation, and evidence-based conclusions.
Demonstrated ability to develop, test, deploy, and tune production detections, explain their limitations, and assess the effects of exclusions and suppression.
Advanced proficiency in one or more security query languages, such as KQL, SPL, EQL, ES|QL, or vendor-specific EDR languages, and ability to adapt and optimize logic across platforms.
Experience analyzing process execution, command lines, process ancestry, authentication, persistence mechanisms, network connections, and related enterprise telemetry.
Understanding of Windows and Linux internals, enterprise networking, identity systems, cloud telemetry, and sophisticated adversary tradecraft.
Practical experience mapping detections to MITRE ATT&CK and explaining the telemetry, test evidence, and limitations behind coverage claims.
Proficiency in Python and PowerShell, or comparable languages, for analysis, enrichment, testing, and automation.
Ability to clearly document detection intent, logic, validation results, investigation steps, and tuning decisions.
Experience translating operational findings into engineering requirements and acceptance criteria, validating sensing effectiveness, and coordinating improvements across hunt analysts and delivery teams.
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree.
Experience with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, Cortex XDR, SentinelOne, Elastic, Splunk, or comparable platforms.
Experience with portable detection content such as Sigma.
Experience with detection-as-code and automated testing.
SIEM data onboarding and pipeline tuning experience.
Experience with adversary emulation and cyber exercise development.
Federal civilian or critical infrastructure cyber operations experience.
Experience maintaining detection engineering competencies, Job Qualification Requirements, training scenarios, and practical assessments.
GIAC Certified Detection Analyst (GCDA).
GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA).
GIAC Defending Advanced Threats (GDAT).
GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst (GCIA).
GIAC Certified Incident Handler (GCIH).
GIAC Cyber Threat Intelligence (GCTI).
Microsoft Certified: Security Operations Analyst Associate (SC-200).
Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Responsibilities

Develop and test hypotheses to identify adversary activity such as persistence, privilege escalation, credential access, lateral movement, command and control, and defense evasion; correlate evidence across data sources and document defensible conclusions.
Build behavioral analytics, correlation rules, signatures, and queries using endpoint, network, identity, cloud, and application telemetry, targeting adversary techniques and activity sequences rather than isolated indicators of compromise.
Convert validated hunt methods, incident findings, and exercise results into reusable detections, documenting each detection’s purpose, data requirements, investigative guidance, assumptions, and known limitations.
Translate remaining capability gaps into technical requirements and acceptance criteria, recommend priorities through Threat Hunting governance, and verify delivered capabilities meet operational needs.
Test detections against representative malicious and benign activity using historical telemetry, controlled simulations, and purple team exercises; assess intended behavior and evasion opportunities, and retain test evidence.
Analyze false positives, false negatives, alert volume, thresholds, exclusions, and environmental baselines; improve detection fidelity and alert context while assessing the risk of suppressing legitimate threat activity.
Assess sensor, tool, and data-source availability, reliability, and quality; identify collection, parsing, normalization, and retention gaps, explain their impact, coordinate remediation, and validate restored coverage.
Develop and maintain automation for enrichment, query execution, analytical workflows, and detection validation, including SOAR playbooks where applicable; tune pipelines and queries and build in review, error handling, and recovery procedures.
Maintain version-controlled content, peer reviews, release criteria, approval records, and rollback procedures; revalidate analytics after platform, schema, environmental, or adversary tradecraft changes.
Coordinate with hunters, incident responders, intelligence analysts, and platform engineers to integrate detections into investigative and automated workflows.
Measure validated detection coverage, fidelity, actionable findings, and remaining gaps; communicate the operational significance of findings without equating rule counts with effective coverage.
Partner with analytics developers and data scientists to develop and validate advanced analytics, including machine learning where appropriate, assessing operational value, false positives, data dependencies, and limitations.
Provide technical leadership supporting the section focal point for vulnerability management and threat hunting activities under applicable authorities.
Develop exercise scenarios and expected detection outcomes, assess sensing failures, and track corrective actions.
Evaluate new tools, data sources, and analytical methods against identified mission gaps; document test results, operational limitations, and adoption recommendations.
Review analytical work, mentor analysts, and set standards for query development, documentation, testing, deployment, and tuning.
Develop and maintain detection engineering competencies, Job Qualification Requirements, training scenarios, and practical assessments in coordination with section leadership.