Red Team Specialist - Vulnerability Management / Manhattan NY / Mesa AZ - Hybrid
Location & Work Arrangement
- Primary target location: New York, NY hybrid (Manhattan office, 2 3 days per week onsite).
- Secondary location: Mesa, AZ (Phoenix area) hybrid. Open if a strong NYC candidate cannot be sourced.
- HQ: Mesa, AZ
Role Summary
The Red Team Specialist will join client s cybersecurity team with a primary focus on vulnerability management across the enterprise. The role is responsible for interpreting penetration test reports (largely produced by third-party vendors), driving remediation across system owners, validating fixes, and reporting on the organization s overall vulnerability posture. A working understanding of penetration testing is required so the candidate can credibly translate findings into actionable remediation work, and a limited amount of internal hands-on testing may also fall under this role.
Key Responsibilities
Vulnerability Management (Primary Focus)
- Own the end-to-end vulnerability management lifecycle: discovery, triage, prioritization, assignment, remediation tracking, and validation.
- Read, interpret, and operationalize penetration test reports delivered by third-party vendors translating findings into clear, actionable remediation tasks for system owners, developers, and infrastructure teams.
- Build and maintain vulnerability dashboards and reports, including CVE tracking, aging analysis, and trend reporting for technical and executive audiences.
- Use Tanium for vulnerability identification, patch management, and reporting (preferred; training available for the right candidate).
- Partner with patch management, infrastructure, and application teams to ensure timely remediation aligned with risk severity.
- Provide guidance on vulnerabilities using a risk-based approach considering ease of exploitation, exposure, and business impact.
- Validate remediation efforts and confirm vulnerabilities have been effectively closed.
- Identify opportunities for improvement in tools such as SecurityScorecard and similar external risk-rating platforms.
Third-Party Penetration Test Coordination
- Manage relationships with third-party penetration testing vendors, including scoping, scheduling, and execution oversight.
- Apply clients internal penetration testing framework across the application onboarding lifecycle.
- Manage deliverables from external testers; review findings, ensure supporting evidence is sufficient, and defend or challenge findings as appropriate.
- Track and report on third-party testing engagements, including risk, mitigation strategies, and references.
Limited Internal Penetration Testing
Note: Internal hands-on testing will be minimal. The candidate should be capable of supporting it but will not perform deep offensive operations day-to-day.
- Conduct light-touch internal penetration tests and vulnerability assessments of servers, web applications, and databases as needed.
- Provide spot-checking and validation of existing technical security controls.
- Communicate technical findings and remediation steps with developers, system administrators, project managers, and senior stakeholders.
Purple Teaming & Incident Response Support
- Support purple team exercises that bring collaboration between Security, Operations, and Business Units to validate technical controls and remediation effectiveness.
- Participate in incident response activities, including tabletop exercises and major incident remediation.
- Provide guidance to the security operations team on adversary techniques and procedures (TTPs) to improve awareness and response times.
Required Experience & Skills
- 2+ years of experience in cybersecurity, with a working knowledge of penetration testing concepts and the ability to read, interpret, and act on penetration test reports.
- Hands-on experience managing a vulnerability management program prioritization, remediation tracking, and reporting.
- Familiarity with web application, infrastructure, and basic cloud (AWS and/or Azure) vulnerability concepts.
- Working knowledge of Windows/Active Directory and Linux systems administration and common vulnerabilities.
- Familiarity with OWASP Top Ten, NIST, and MITRE ATT&CK frameworks.
- Working proficiency in at least one scripting language: Bash, PowerShell, or Python.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills able to clearly articulate technical findings and remediation requirements to mixed audiences (engineers through senior stakeholders).
- Demonstrated ability to drive remediation across cross-functional teams.
Preferred (Strong Pluses, Not Required)
- Tanium experience: Building reports, tracking CVEs, and supporting vulnerability and patching workflows. client is a Tanium reseller and uses Tanium heavily this is a significant plus.
- CrowdStrike experience: Hands-on familiarity with CrowdStrike Falcon (EDR) is a strong plus.
- Exposure to penetration testing or red teaming engagements (web apps, APIs, network devices, databases, OS, cloud).
- Experience with NIST 800-53 and the Risk Management Framework (RMF).
- 1+ years of SOC and/or incident response experience, with a focus on host data acquisition and threat hunting.
- Familiarity with penetration testing toolsets (Burp Suite, NessQualys, Kali Linux, Metasploit, Cobalt Strike) at a level sufficient to interpret vendor outputs.
- Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
Certifications (Any of the Following Are a Plus)
Practical/offensive:
- OSCP
- eCPTX
- eCPPX
- PNPT
- GPEN
- eCXD
- CEH
- PenTest+
Defensive:
Cloud security:
- AWS Certified Security Specialty or Azure equivalent
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