Cyber Security Project Engineer

Description

The DarkStar Group is seeking a Cyber Security Project Engineer with a TS/SCI + Poly clearance (applicable to this customer) to join one of our top projects in McLean, VA. Below is an overview of the project, as well as information on our company, our benefits, and our $25,000 referral program.

THE PROGRAM

The DarkStar Group is a member of 100% of the winning teams for the largest technology program in the Intel Community. We've been supporting this customer on many different sub-projects of this program since our founding in 2013. We've grown on this effort by providing the customer with Engineers who have done exceptional work, and we've retained our staff by paying very strong salaries, and working hard to ensure each Engineer is doing work that aligns with their career interest.

THE PROJECT
The Sponsor's proactive cyber defense team is responsible for timely identification, triage, analyze, quantify, and track remediation of newly discovered or withstanding vulnerabilities and weaknesses across all of the organization's networks and systems. The Sponsor requires support specializing in the application of theoretical and practical knowledge of cybersecurity, specifically vulnerability management, to maintain an optimal security and risk posture of networks, systems, and information. This is a tactical role and the work may be performed independently or within a team environment. The Sponsor needs polished skills in data analysis, fundamental understanding of types of vulnerabilities, network attacks, and current industry threats, executing within a moderate to heavy workload. To include analysis across data sources and tools, correlated with threat intelligence from numerous sources, with detailed remediation/mitigation plans to be tracked via KPI metrics.

THE ROLE

• The Contractor Team shall enable continuous situational awareness of current and emerging cyber threats by collaboration and support with other cyber defense teams within the Sponsor.
• The Contractor Team shall deliver data-driven analysis of withstanding and new vulnerabilities and weaknesses present the organization's systems and networks.
• The Contractor Team shall report on emerging major vulnerabilities and any corresponding intelligence reports, to include any active exploitation seen in the wild or the presence of any proof of concept exploits to be available that would pose an immediate threat the organization.
• The Contractor Team shall perform proactive data gathering to better understand the political, economic, and behavioral aspects of threats, cyber activities, and threat actors.
• The Contractor Team shall assist with threat data enrichment, curation, automation, and dissemination within a threat intelligence platform.
• The Contractor Team shall make recommendations about cyber gaps, collaborate with peers on solutions to address cyber needs through various cyber gathering methods.
• The Contractor Team shall conduct research on threat actor groups, malware, exploit methods, and vulnerabilities as well as manage and curate Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) to assist with analysis for threat indicators seen in the environment.
• The Contractor Team shall apply knowledge and research of current cyber threats and the associated Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures used to attack computer networks.
• The Contractor Team shall generate vulnerability and weakness risk reports on identified findings, and in-depth analysis on how the identified findings can impact internal stakeholders and missions.
• The Contractor Team shall provide prioritization and remediation guidance to remediate or mitigate the identified findings.
• The Contractor Team shall provide input for successful operationalization of vulnerability assessment and other cyber security technologies to further streamline and find efficiency in the teams operations.
• The Contractor Team shall track upon identified findings to completion or acceptable level of mitigation or risk as dictated by the Sponsor.
• The Contractor Team shall generate metrics of the quantification and qualification of risk leveraging the data and findings at each step of the vulnerability management lifecycle, to include Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Risk Indicators (KRIs).
• The Contractor Team shall present relevant findings to both technical and non-technical audiences, to include senior organizational management.
• The Contractor Team shall provide input and help champion the implementation of processes, procedures, and technology solutions to further mature the operational program and team cadence.
• The Contractor Team shall respond to internal team and stakeholder's inquiries on vulnerabilities and related topics, as well as regularly support, involve, and liaise with other internal teams

Required Skills

• Demonstrated experience in cyber security or related IT field.
• Demonstrated experience with adversarial tactics, techniques, & procedures (TTPs).
• Demonstrated experience with computer attack methods and system exploitation techniques.
• Demonstrated experience with cyber security principles for Linux, Windows, virtual platforms, networking, and Cloud.
• Demonstrated experience with network architectures and fundamentals.
• Demonstrated experience developing risk management methodologies.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing test results to develop risk and threat mitigation plans.
• Demonstrated experience with market-leading vulnerability management tools including the ability to deploy, configure, and run these tools.
• Demonstrated experience with vulnerability concepts and prevalent vulnerability types such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), path traversals, denial of service (DoS), buffer overflows, command injection, race conditions, open redirects, privilege escalation, authentication bypasses, XML External Entity (XXE) attacks and similar.
• Demonstrated experience with privilege and high/low trust boundaries and what defines a vulnerability vs. weakness.
• Demonstrated experience with vulnerability and risk scoring frameworks and methodologies such as CVSSv2 and CVSSv3.
• Demonstrated experience with vulnerability repositories (NVD, CVE MITRE, and VULdb) and exploitation techniques (MITRE ATT&CK and DEFEND).
• Demonstrated experience with web application (OWASP) and OS-level vulnerability categories and documentation.
• Demonstrated experience communicating how an attacker would exploit vulnerabilities and the types of attacks they could be used for.
• Demonstrated experience with the general threat landscape of an IT network and how vulnerabilities and exploitation of them impact it.
• Demonstrated experience with patch management and software development lifecycle (SDLC).
• Demonstrated experience in security operations, vulnerabilities and exploitation, network security, cloud security, and a comprehensive background in information security.
• Demonstrated experience with commercially available threat intelligence sources and toolsets.
• Demonstrated experience with using open-source and human information sources to track and collect information on adversaries, malware, campaigns, and related malicious infrastructure.
• Demonstrated experience conducting all-source research on a wide range of cyber issues.
• Demonstrated experience with leveraging Tableau or PowerBI to collect and visualize metric data.
• Demonstrated experience administering a SharePoint environment.
• Demonstrated experience with portfolio management.
• Demonstrated experience resolving complex problems including organizing and structuring solutions.
• Demonstrated experience developing executive level briefing materials and reports.
• Demonstrated experience with Program and Project Management methodologies.
• Demonstrated experience with ServiceNow and JIRA.
• Demonstrated experience eliciting and identifying requirements.
• Demonstrated experience reviewing program and generating formal review documentation.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating, supporting, and participating in program meetings and reviews.
• Demonstrated experience reviewing and identifying inconsistencies in program plans.
• Demonstrated experience supporting division-level budget and plans activities.
• Demonstrated experience with project management activities such as planning projects, meeting objectives, developing contingencies, and producing schedules.
• Demonstrated experience managing meetings to include meeting minutes, organizing, scheduling, and facilitating.

Desired Skills (Optional)

• Demonstrated experience communicating vulnerability results and risk posture to senior executives.
• Demonstrated experience performing complex technical tasks with minimal direction.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or other related scientific or technical discipline.
• Demonstrated experience with Confluence.
• Demonstrated experience with advanced analytic features within Excel such as PivotTables, PivotCharts, VLOOKUP.
• Demonstrated experience in malware reverse-engineering techniques.
• Demonstrated experience in threat hunting in large distributed environments.

About The DarkStar Group

Our Company

The DarkStar Group is a small business that solves BIG problems. We're one of the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the US, and our engineers and scientists support the most critical national security missions in Virginia, Maryland, and elsewhere. Data Science, Software Engineering, Cloud/AWS Infrastructure, and Cyber/CNO are our core areas of expertise. We offer interesting and important work, job security, some of the best and most flexible benefits you'll find in the IC, and salaries so strong that they'll likely surprise you.

Our Benefits

The DarkStar Group offers exceptional compensation and benefits:

• very strong salaries;
• 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision premiums for you and all dependents;
• the ability to get increased salary if you don't need medical/dental/vision;
• 100% company-paid disability and life insurance benefits;
• a generously-funded HSA;
• an 8% 401(k) contribution;
• 31 days of PTO/holidays to start (more with tenure);
• the ability to flex time across pay periods without using your PTO;
• a generous training budget;
• $25,000 employee referral bonuses;
• business development / growth incentives; and
• top notch company swag.

** We have a huge growth opportunity, so we are offering up to a $25,000 reward for anyone new you refer whom we hire. **

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.

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