Federal Incident Response Lead (Principal Information Security Engineer)

We are looking for a Federal Incident Response Lead (Principal Information Security Engineer) to join our team. This is a full-time onsite role based in Crystal City, VA, reporting to the Director of Federal Security Operations within the Enterprise Security department. You will establish and lead incident response operations from the ground up within a new, dedicated DoD/DoW IL6 cloud environment. You’ll drive end-to-end incident command, proactive threat hunting, and the operationalization of processes and tooling to ensure rapid response. This mission-critical role ensures our federal security practices align with DoD CC SRG and FedRAMP requirements.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

• Establish and mature an Incident Response (IR) program within a new, dedicated, classified DoD environment (primarily DoD IL6 with FedRAMP and DoD IL5 support)
• Lead end-to-end incident response, including triage, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident lessons learned with rigorous documentation
• Stand up and lead a formal threat hunting capability to proactively investigate and mitigate potential security threats in an IL6 environments
• Partner with security platform engineering to operationalize and tune SIEM/SOAR (Splunk Enterprise Security) content and playbooks, define detection requirements and coverage gaps, and ensure alerts are actionable for rapid response
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop and refine IR playbooks, procedures, and automation aligned with DoD CC SRG and FedRAMP

Who You Are (Success Profile)

• You thrive in ambiguity. You're comfortable building the path as you walk it. You thrive in a dynamic environment, seeing ambiguity not as a hindrance, but as the raw material to build something meaningful.
• You act like an owner. Your passion for the mission fuels your bias for action. You operate with integrity because you genuinely care about the outcome. You adapt to what’s needed, navigating seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution.
• You are a problem-solver. You seek out challenges because you are energized by finding solutions, knowing that solving the hard problems delivers the biggest impact.
• You are a high-trust collaborator. You are ambitious for the team, not just yourself. You embrace our challenge culture by giving and receiving ongoing feedback—knowing that candor delivered with clarity and respect is the truest form of teamwork and the fastest way to earn trust.
• You operate with urgency. You understand that in a high-growth environment, speed and quality are not mutually exclusive. You have a relentless focus on execution and a bias for action, delivering high-impact results quickly to win for the customer and the team.

What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications)

• US Citizenship and an active U.S. Secret Security Clearance (Top Secret preferred), with a willingness to participate in an on-call rotation (nights and weekends)
• 8+ years leading incident response and DFIR in DoD/classified environments, with proven incident command experience in 24/7 operations
• Experience establishing IR programs and formal threat hunting functions in cloud-centric federal environments
• Hands-on leadership operationalizing and tuning SIEM/SOAR (preferably Splunk Enterprise Security) content and playbooks
• Practical application of FedRAMP Moderate/High, NIST 800-53, DoD CC SRG, RMF, and DISA STIGs to IR processes and tooling

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or a related field
• Have or be able to obtain advanced DoD 8140 DCWF certification
• Experience operating in U.S. government cloud regions (AWS GovCloud/Secret or Azure Government/DoD/Secret) with DoD IL5/IL6 constraints

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