Senior Security Engineer

Why do you need to choose between doing important work and having a fulfilling life? At Ardent, we have both. Ardent employees are committed to solving our customers’ most difficult problems—and we are committed to the well-being, personal goals, and professional development of our employee. We are “All In.” We put forth our strongest effort possible to get the mission accomplished and we do it together. We respect the skills and experience you bring to the Ardent team. And we provide a rewarding environment to help you succeed. 

We offer highly competitive benefits, professional development opportunities, and an exceptional culture that embraces flexibility, innovation, collaboration, and career growth. A collective service mindset underpins our work, and a shared camaraderie to serve clients, colleagues and our communities set us apart. Our full commitment to being "All In" for our employees and our clients is not just our approach, it is our standard. If this sounds like the perfect fit for you, choose Ardent and make a difference with us. 

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Ardent is seeking a Senior Security Engineer to join our team.  

This is a hybrid position, requiring up to 3 days per week on-site in Washington DC.

Position Description:

Ardent is seeking a Senior Security Engineer to support security engineering, SIEM administration, and detection optimization within a Virtual Security Operations Center (vSOC) environment. This role focuses on Microsoft Sentinel administration, detection rule development, and log management to ensure effective threat detection and response. The engineer will work closely with stakeholders to enhance visibility, improve security posture, and support vulnerability and patch management efforts. This position requires deep technical expertise in security engineering, SIEM platforms, and modern enterprise security tools within a secure, compliance-driven environment.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Administer and maintain Microsoft Sentinel, including configuration, performance tuning, and platform optimization.
• Develop, tune, and maintain detection rules and analytics to improve threat detection capabilities.
• Write and optimize KQL queries for threat detection, investigation, and reporting.
• Validate log ingestion and ensure completeness and accuracy of data sources.
• Support onboarding and normalization of log sources across enterprise systems.
• Coordinate vulnerability prioritization and support patch governance efforts.
• Serve as a technical liaison with stakeholders to align security operations with mission needs.
• Support incident response efforts through engineering support and tool optimization.
• Document engineering processes, detection logic, and system configurations.
• Collaborate with SOC analysts and detection engineers to improve detection coverage and response efficiency.

Requirements: 

• Must be a U.S. Citizen.
• Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 4+ years of experience in cybersecurity engineering or security operations.
• 2+ years of experience supporting SIEM platforms, preferably Microsoft Sentinel.
• Experience developing detection logic and performing threat detection engineering.
• Proficiency in KQL or similar query languages.
• Experience with log ingestion, data normalization, and security telemetry.
• Experience supporting vulnerability management and patching processes.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to diverse audiences.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• CISSP, GCIA, GCIH, CEH, or equivalent cybersecurity certification.
• Microsoft Sentinel or Microsoft security platform certification.
• Cloud security certification (e.g., AWS or Azure security).
• Experience supporting federal or government security operations environments.
• Experience working in secure or compliance-driven environments.

Due to the nature of the work we support, all candidates in consideration for this role must be willing to undergo and maintain a government-issued background investigation process. We highly encourage all Veterans and those with disabilities to apply.

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Ardent is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other basis protected by state, local, or federal law.