Senior Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) / Cryptography Architect (2026-0213)

Acclaim Technical Services • Reston, VA

13d • $190,000 - $215,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Acclaim Technical Services (ATS) is seeking a Senior Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) / Cryptography Architect with an active TS/SCI clearance to support their post-quantum cryptography readiness capability and customer engagements in Northern Virginia. This role involves leading the technical architecture for identifying quantum-vulnerable cryptography, developing cryptographic inventories and Cryptographic Bills of Materials (CBOMs), assessing mission and system risk, evaluating crypto-agility, and creating PQC migration strategies. The architect will work across various environments including enterprise applications, infrastructure, networks, cloud, security services, PKI, data platforms, and mission systems to translate cryptographic discovery into actionable migration decisions. The ideal candidate possesses deep applied cryptography expertise combined with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, systems engineering skills, and the ability to communicate complex cryptographic risk to both technical and executive Federal stakeholders.

Requirements

• Active TS/SCI clearance.
• Significant applied experience in cryptography, cybersecurity architecture, enterprise security, or cryptographic engineering.
• Deep understanding of: RSA, ECC / ECDSA / ECDH, Diffie-Hellman, PKI and certificate architectures, TLS, digital signatures, key establishment and key exchange, symmetric cryptography, hashing and integrity mechanisms.
• Strong knowledge of NIST PQC standards, including: ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA.
• Experience with crypto-agility, cryptographic modernization, and migration architecture.
• Understanding of hybrid classical/PQC migration approaches and interoperability considerations.
• Experience with certificate and key lifecycle management, PKI, KMS/HSM environments, and cryptographic libraries.
• Ability to identify cryptographic algorithms and dependencies within complex applications, systems, protocols, and architectures.
• Ability to evaluate cryptographic-discovery evidence, validate findings, identify false positives or gaps, and translate results into defensible migration decisions.
• Experience developing technical architectures, migration roadmaps, risk assessments, and implementation guidance.
• Ability to communicate complex technical and cryptographic issues to Federal technical and executive leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Cybersecurity, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.

Nice To Haves

• 10+ years of cybersecurity, security architecture, cryptography, PKI, or applied cryptography experience, with demonstrated depth in cryptographic systems.
• Hands-on experience with post-quantum cryptography assessments or migrations.
• Experience creating or managing cryptographic inventories or CBOMs.
• Experience conducting cryptographic discovery across software, infrastructure, cloud, network, and enterprise environments.
• Familiarity with applicable NIST, Federal, IC, and DoD cryptographic modernization requirements and migration guidance.
• Experience developing or reviewing cryptographic software.
• Programming or scripting experience in Python, Rust, C/C++, Java, Go, or similar languages, sufficient to analyze implementations and automate discovery or assessment workflows.
• Experience with source-code analysis, software composition analysis, network/configuration discovery, PKI assessment, or related security tooling.
• Experience with cloud KMS, HSMs, certificate-management platforms, and enterprise PKI.
• Contributions to cryptographic standards, technical publications, open-source cryptographic projects, or relevant research.
• Experience supporting highly classified or mission-critical systems.
• Experience briefing senior Federal or national-security stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead cryptographic discovery, inventory, assessment, and migration architecture across complex Federal and national-security environments.
• Develop and maintain authoritative cryptographic inventories and CBOMs, including algorithms, protocols, certificates, keys, cryptographic libraries, hardware dependencies, system owners, mission dependencies, and migration status.
• Identify the specific quantum-vulnerable cryptographic components and dependencies within applications, systems, protocols, infrastructure, and data flows.
• Evaluate discovery evidence from source code, binaries, configuration files, network protocols, certificates, PKI, KMS/HSM platforms, cryptographic libraries, cloud services, vulnerability/security tooling, and other available data sources.
• Assess crypto-agility and quantum risk based on algorithm usage, mission criticality, data sensitivity and longevity, system dependencies, interoperability, operational constraints, and migration complexity.
• Develop mission-prioritized PQC migration roadmaps, sequencing systems and dependencies based on technical risk and operational impact.
• Design target-state PQC and hybrid migration architectures using applicable NIST standards and Government-approved cryptographic requirements.
• Evaluate and recommend migration approaches for PKI, TLS, digital signatures, key establishment, software libraries, infrastructure services, KMS/HSM environments, and other cryptographic dependencies.
• Develop architecture diagrams, migration patterns, risk assessments, technical decision documents, implementation guidance, and executive-level migration plans.
• Work with application owners, infrastructure teams, security organizations, enterprise architects, mission stakeholders, and vendors to validate findings and develop practical migration approaches.
• Support proofs of concept, technical validation, implementation planning, and migration execution where required.
• Assess commercial and Government cryptographic-discovery and migration tools and integrate them into a tool-agnostic assessment methodology rather than depending on a single proprietary platform.
• Brief Federal technical leaders, CISOs/CIOs, program executives, mission owners, and other senior stakeholders on cryptographic exposure, migration priorities, dependencies, and recommended actions.
• Maintain traceability from discovered cryptographic components through risk assessment, remediation decision, target architecture, and migration status.

Benefits

• healthcare
• wellness
• financial
• retirement
• family support
• continuing education
• time off benefits

What This Job Offers

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