Senior Security Engineer

Job Description

ECS is seeking a Senior Security Engineer to work in our Suitland, MD office.
Position Summary:
ECS Federal is a leading information security and information technology company in Washington, DC. We are looking to hire a Senior Security Engineer to support a full range of cyber security services on a long-term contract in Washington DC. The position is full time/permanent and will support a US Government civilian agency. The position is available immediately upon finding a qualified candidate with the appropriate background clearance.

The Senior Security Engineer is responsible for designing, operating, and advancing the organization's security monitoring and detection capabilities. This role leads a team of approximately 6 security engineers and owns event management, log ingestion, log retention, and detection engineering across hybrid and cloud environments. The position requires deep hands-on experience with Microsoft Sentinel, SIEM platforms, cloud native security tooling, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC), while operating within compliance-driven federal environments.

Position Responsibilities:

• Stay informed on emerging data collection patterns, cloud service telemetry offerings, and platform-native security logging features, ensuring the security monitoring architecture remains modern, scalable, and cost-effective.
• Serve as a technical advisor to DevOps initiatives, enabling seamless integration of security monitoring and telemetry while maintaining high developer and security velocity.
• Design and implement creative, scalable solutions for custom log ingestion and detection engineering to support advanced security monitoring use cases.
• Provide technical recommendations to ensure cloud capabilities are implemented securely, optimized for cost, and consistently deployed through validated Infrastructure as Code (IaC) pipelines.
• Conduct Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) of the application's security design for the appropriate security controls, which protect the confidentiality and integrity of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
• Design and develop cybersecurity or cybersecurity-enabled products.
• Design hardware, operating systems, and software applications to adequately address cybersecurity requirements.
• Design or integrate appropriate data backup capabilities into overall system designs and ensure that appropriate technical and procedural processes exist for secure system backups and protected storage of backup data.
• Develop and direct system testing and validation procedures and documentation.
• Develop detailed security design documentation for component and interface specifications to support system design and development.
• Develop Disaster Recovery and Continuity of Operations plans for systems under development and ensure testing prior to systems entering a production environment.
• Develop specific cybersecurity countermeasures and risk mitigation strategies for systems and/or applications.
• Identify and direct the remediation of technical problems encountered during testing and implementation of new systems (e.g., identify and find workarounds for communication protocols that are not interoperable).

Salary Range: $125,000-140,000

General Description of Benefits

Required Skills

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Knowledge of secure configuration management techniques. (e.g., Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs), cybersecurity best practices on cisecurity.org).
• Knowledge of software development models (e.g., Waterfall Model, Spiral Model).
• Knowledge of software engineering.
• Knowledge of structured analysis principles and methods.
• Experience designing architectures and frameworks.
• Knowledge of system design tools, methods, and techniques, including automated systems analysis and design tools.
• Knowledge of the systems engineering process.
• Knowledge of Supply Chain Risk Management Practices (NIST SP 800-161)
• Knowledge of critical infrastructure systems with information communication technology that were designed without system security considerations.
• Knowledge of network security architecture concepts including topology, protocols, components, and principles (e.g., application of defense-in-depth).
• Knowledge of network systems management principles, models, methods (e.g., end-to-end systems performance monitoring), and tools.
• Knowledge of SIEM, Logging & Detection.
• Knowledge of Endpoint & Platform Security
• Knowledge of Large Language Models and use of AI in cybersecurity.

Certifications/Licenses:

• Bachelor's degree or higher
• 10+ years' experience in security engineering in mid to large environments.
• Certifications addressing security and risk management, asset security, security engineering, communications and network security, identity and access management, security assessment and testing, security operations, software development security, system security, network infrastructure, access control, cryptography, assessments and audits, and organizational security
• Active Public Trust clearance or eligible to obtain a Public Trust clearance

Desired Skills

• In-depth knowledge of Information Theory (e.g., source coding, channel coding, algorithm complexity theory, and data compression).
• Ability to apply system design tools, methods, and techniques, including automated systems analysis and design tools.
• Knowledge of network protocols such as TCP/IP, Dynamic Host Configuration, Domain Name System (DNS), and directory services.
• Knowledge of network design processes, including understanding of security objectives, operational objectives, and trade-offs.
• Ability to apply network security architecture concepts including topology, protocols, components, and principles (e.g., application of defense-in-depth).
• Experience designing the integration of hardware and software solutions.
• Experience in developing and applying security system access controls.
• Skill in discerning the protection needs (i.e., security controls) of information systems and networks.
• Skill in evaluating the adequacy of security designs and conducting reviews of technical systems.
• Skill in the use of design modeling (e.g., unified modeling language).
• Ability to apply secure system design tools, methods and techniques and ensure security practices are followed throughout the acquisition process.

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ECS is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate or allow discrimination on the basis any characteristic protected by law. 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, or local jurisdiction law.

ECS is a leading mid-sized provider of technology services to the United States Federal Government. We are focused on people, values and purpose. Every day, our 3300+ employees focus on providing their technical talent to support the Federal Agencies and Departments of the US Government to serve, protect and defend the American People.