Bachelor's degree with 9 years of experience or Master's degree with 7 years of experience.
Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility.
Must reside within commuting distance of Reston, VA.
Current CompTIA Security+ CE or equivalent certification.
8+ years of hands-on cyber engineering experience, particularly in SOC/SIEM architecture.
Technical expertise in Zero Trust and AI platforms, with a focus on security telemetry and SIEM automation.
Strong troubleshooting skills with CLI on Windows and Linux.
Responsibilities
Engage with customers quickly, learning their systems and leaving behind actionable artifacts.
Drive cyber team initiatives in new or stagnant environments, ensuring they are left operational.
Evaluate cyber programs against security frameworks and recommend modernization solutions.
Work on Zero Trust, AI platform security, and data engineering for security telemetry.
Apply RMF, CMMC, and ICD-705 in live environments and support incident response efforts.
Utilize time-indexed and stateful data to enhance Zero Trust activities.
Troubleshoot using CLI tools and escalate issues with supporting evidence.
Benefits
Remote work flexibility with occasional travel requirements.
Opportunity to work in diverse customer environments in Virginia and D.C.
Engagement in cutting-edge security technologies and methodologies.
Chance to contribute to technical proposals and white papers.
Professional development through teaching and mentoring opportunities.
Full Job Description
Job Description
Description
SAIC has an opening for a highly hands-on, Principal Cyber Engineer who lives and breathes this work-the SME for SMEs. The ideal candidate is someone who experiments at home, maintains a personal mixed OS lab, and genuinely enjoys tinkering with new and opensource security tools, building and breaking environments to learn how things work. This role is well-suited to someone who genuinely enjoys exploring new security capabilities, testing ideas, coding up useful experiments/aides/queries/skills/scripts with AI, and learning emerging patterns in Zero Trust, cloud security, AI platforms, and security data engineering.
***This is a Remote role but candidates must live within commuting range of Reston, VA. Work is primarily from home, but frequently in customer spaces in Virginia or D.C., at the proposal center in Reston, at the Air Force Business Group in Crystal City, or on occasional travel. Candidates must be able to travel occasionally on short notice to support internal and external customer needs.***
Assignments range from two-days to 50 percent time for nine months. Travel is occasional and usually short; some trips come on short notice; occasional trips can last up to six weeks, with longer trips planned in advance. Candidates must have an active Top Secret clearance, with SCI eligibility.
Responsibilities:
Enter customer spaces on short cycle. Learn the stack and the people in days. Leave usable artifacts, not just a briefing deck.
If the space is new, thin, or stuck, drive the cyber team, then hand it back runnable. Consult contract cyber leads; do not replace them.
Assess cyber programs and customer environments against applicable cyber and security frameworks. Recommend solutions, modernization, automation, and next steps to mature the innovation space.
Work in Zero Trust, AI platform security, data engineering for security telemetry, and SIEM / SOC architecture and automation. Support growing efforts in AI governance and securing AI agents and tool gateways.
Apply RMF, CMMC, and ICD-705 in live spaces. Support incident response. Engineer and tune security and cloud architecture, endpoint platforms, DLP, IPS, and load-balancer / traffic paths.
Treat time-indexed data (what happened) and stateful data (what is true now) as complementary, and use platforms and vendor relationships so both exist and feed Zero Trust activity targets.
Troubleshoot with CLI first-Windows, Linux, security-tool CLIs, AWS Console and AWS CLI. Escalate with evidence.
Teach. Present white papers. Write job aids for new and old frameworks. Contribute technically to proposals.
Qualifications
Bachelor's degree and 9 years of experience, or A Master's degree and 7 years of experience.
U.S. citizen with an active Top Secret clearance and the ability to obtain SCI.
Must live within commuting range of Reston, VA. Work is primarily from home, with regular time in VA/D.C. customer spaces, the Reston proposal center, AF BG Crystal City, and occasional travel (some short notice).
Current CompTIA Security+ CE or equivalent 8140 intermediate certification.
Typically 8+ years of hands-on cyber engineering, SOC / SIEM architecture, enablement, or equivalent at Senior Principal depth. Must be able to drive a team and advise a contract cyber lead.
Experience assessing cyber programs and environments against cyber and security frameworks, then recommending solutions, modernization, and automation. Proven work in customer spaces, including mixed classification, on a support-request cadence. Occasional travel; some short notice.
Technical depth in Zero Trust and AI platforms; data engineering applied to security telemetry; SIEM automation or SOC tooling and architecture. Splunk experience strongly preferred.
Working familiarity within RMF, CMMC, ICD-705, incident response, security architecture, cloud security architecture, endpoint security platforms, DLP, IPS, and load balancers.
Can clearly explain time-indexed vs. stateful data, why a security environment needs both, and how tooling and vendors provide both for Zero Trust activity targets.
Strong troubleshooting skills. Current CLI on Windows and Linux (PowerShell, Bash or equivalent). Hands-on AWS Console and AWS CLI (IAM, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, VPC / flow logs, S3, CloudWatch or equivalent).
Communicates and teaches cleanly. Writes job aids and presents to mixed audiences (technical and non-technical).
Desired Qualifications
Current SCI; TS/SCI with Poly is a plus for the high end of the Service Delivery customers.
Splunk Certified Admin, higher, or equivelant for security data engineering knowledge and experience yet not biased to any one tool. (Splunk, elastic, sentinal, etc...)
CISSP or higher (ISSAP, ISSEP, or ISSMP) to cover GRC related assignments
Additional current credentials in cloud, detection, architecture, or data (CCSP, CISM, GIAC, AWS / Azure security, CySA+ / CASP+, or equivalent).
Proposal / capture technical consulting; published or internal white papers; prior enablement of mixed-skill cyber teams.
Budding interest in AI governance and in securing AI agents and tool gateways.
Experience with SOAR, EDR / XDR, identity platforms, security data lakes, and securing AI / ML platforms (Azure OpenAI, Bedrock, on-prem model hosting, RAG / LLMOps controls).
Target salary range: $120,001 - $160,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.
About SAIC
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is a technology integrator in the technical, engineering, intelligence, and enterprise information technology markets. SAIC has approximately 26,000 employees and operates in more than 70 countries. The company was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. SAIC provides services to the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and civilian agencies. The company also serves commercial customers in the healthcare, energy, and financial services sectors.
