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Principal Active Defense Engineer

USA.VA.Reston💼 Full-time🗓 2026-09-01 → 2026-09-26

Core

Senior technical anchor for Active Defense, setting detection direction, architecture, and AI/automation strategy to protect organization from cyber threats.

Role type

Principal Active Defense Engineer (Senior IC)

Builds

Detections-as-code pipeline, curated datasets, CI/CD tooling, and AI-assisted analysis/automation for threat detection.

Domain

Cybersecurity / Security Analytics / AI in Security

Deliverable

production ML models | product features

Required skills

Detection engineering, software development (Python/Java/Kotlin/Scala/JS), platform architecture, threat intelligence translation, AI/agent application, cloud security, SIEM (Splunk), automated testing/validation

Preferred skills

Behavioral baselines, anomaly detection, MITRE ATT&CK, cross-team technical leadership, program judgment

Technologies

Splunk, Spark, Python, AI-assisted analysis tools

Responsibilities

Set technical direction and architecture for detection portfolio; serve as senior reviewer for infrastructure and complex detections; lead large initiatives from concept to production; build reusable detections-as-code lifecycle and tooling; mentor engineers to raise team technical ceiling; determine AI/agent application in detection work; drive detection quality (coverage, fidelity, noise reduction); represent detection engineering across organization; evaluate emerging detection approaches and vendors.

Seniority

Principal, hands-on IC with mentorship and design review

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