Defensive Cybersecurity Engineer/Blue Team

At MITRE, your passion fuels work that impacts our nation and improves lives. This is where your skills strengthen national security, cybersecurity, health, transportation, and citizen services. We're a nonprofit engineering, applied research, and advanced technology organization working in the public interest. With objectivity and integrity at our core, we lead federally funded research and development centers for U.S. government agencies - collaborating with industry and academia to deliver integrated, high-impact solutions that advance our nation's health, security, and prosperity. Our people tackle the toughest technical challenges, supported by competitive benefits, meaningful career development, and a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence. Choose MITRE for a career with purpose - and help shape the future.

Department Summary:

MITRE's Defensive Cyber Operations department is seeking creative people to work collaboratively with our staff of cybersecurity engineers in the fields of defensive cyber operations, threat hunt, detection engineering, and cyber deception and adversary engagement with increasing emphasis in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support mission-driven cybersecurity initiatives for government sponsors.

This role blends hands-on defensive operations with advanced research and applied development in AI-enabled cybersecurity. The successful candidate will have deep Splunk Enterprise expertise, experience with scripting, and a strong understanding of MITRE ATT&CK and its application to threat detection, threat hunting, and adversary behavior analysis.

Roles & Responsibilities:

This role provides the opportunity to work side-by-side with members of the national law enforcement and intelligence communities on a variety of technical and strategic initiatives in the areas of cyber security and systems engineering, helping to enhance the safety and security of the nation on a daily basis.

Our work responsibilities vary, but could include:

• Combining cybersecurity domain expertise and contemporary data science skills to enhance adversary detection, network defense, and threat hunting process improvement.
• Developing AI-enabled cybersecurity tools for anomaly detection, behavioral analytics, malware analysis, and adversary emulation.
• Designing, developing, and optimizing advanced threat hunting methodologies, Splunk detections, analytics, and dashboards to improve cyber defense capabilities.
• Developing scripts, APIs, and automation solutions that enhance cyber operations, improve analyst workflows, and integrate security platforms.
• Researching emerging AI techniques (e.g., machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, reinforcement learning) and assessing their applicability to defensive cyber missions.
• Using MITRE ATT&CK to hunt the adversary and build TTP-based defenses.
• Using detection engineering to create security analytics and dashboards in Splunk or Elastic and integrating new data feeds
• Automating container environments via continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD)
• Acting as a trusted advisor to the Federal Government

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 6 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 3 years' experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Significant experience with Splunk, including both backend administration and detection/content development.
• Experience developing scripts and integrating APIs to automate cyber operations and security workflows.
• Knowledge of cyber security operations and cyber security principles and their application
• Demonstrated experience conducting proactive cyber threat hunting across enterprise environments.
• Strong understanding of the MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting technical analysis to both technical and executive audiences.
• Applicants selected for this position will be subject to a government clearance security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.
• Active Top Secret/SCI Clearance with poly
• Per the U.S. Government's eligibility requirements for a clearance, U.S Citizenship is required
• This position has an on-site requirement of 5 days a week on-site

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience supporting or developing capabilities within the Augury platform
• Experience developing advanced Splunk analytics, detections, dashboards, and security content.
• Experience with cyber automation, orchestration, and Security Operations Center (SOC) modernization initiatives
• Experience with Elastic/ELK
• Experience using MITRE ATT&CK
• Experience using or developing AI tools and techniques for defensive cyber operations

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):
Top Secret/SCI/Polygraph

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):
Top Secret/SCI/Polygraph

Salary compensation range and midpoint:
$158,800 - $198,500 - $238,200 Annual

Work Location Type:
Onsite

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.

MITRE intends to maintain a website that is fully accessible to all individuals. If you are unable to search or apply for jobs and would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of MITRE's employment process, please email for general support and for intern positions. This service is for individuals requiring reasonable accommodation requests. Please note that vendor solicitations will not receive a reply.

Benefits information may be found here.

Copyright 1997-2026, The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved. MITRE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. Material on this site may be copied and distributed with permission only.