SR. Security Engineer – AWS, Splunk, Tenable; Public Trust (Hybrid)

Job Description

Company: Peyton Resource Group

Location: Bethesda, US

• 6 month Contract-to-Hire
• Contract Rate: $80-95/hr on W2
• Salary Conversion: $195-210K, DOE
• Location: Bethesda, MD
• Hybrid; 3 days/week onsite work is required
• Must be a US Citizen or Green Card/Permanent Resident
• Ability to obtain a Public Trust Clearance is required

Summary:

The Senior Security Engineer plays a hands-on role in a multi-disciplined security team, focusing on the implementation of security controls, ensuring compliance with the federal cybersecurity framework (FISMA), and supporting secure cloud adoption across multiple platforms. The Sr. Engineer actively works across vulnerability management, application security, cloud security, SIEM, and bringing in new AI-based tooling to strengthen the organization’s overall security posture.

Responsibilities:
• Enhance and automate security and compliance checks using scripting and available tools; evaluate emerging technologies, including AI capabilities, to improve security coverage and operational efficiency. Lead team efforts to integrate AI/ML-driven capabilities with the current security tools and operations to enhance and automate assessment and remediation using LLM.
• Implement and maintain security controls for on-prem and cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure), ensuring compliance with FISMA, NIH policy, and federal security requirements.
• Recommend and support security services for identity access, privileged access, vulnerability management, encryption, network micro-segmentation, and centralized log management in both cloud and on-premises systems.
• Integrate and optimize enterprise security and SIEM solutions (e.g., Splunk, Tenable) for continuous monitoring, event correlation, and compliance visibility in hybrid environments.
• Conduct threat modeling and security assessments of cloud deployments, identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities and supporting secure cloud migrations.
• Provide security guidance, best practices, and compliance support to developers, operations teams, and system owners, promoting security awareness across the organization.
• Analyze vulnerability and assessment data to identify systemic risks, remediation trends, and opportunities for process or tool improvement, collaborating with system administrators and security teams for practical, risk-informed remediation.
• Contribute and manage documentation, standard operating procedures, and technical guidance to support the broader security program and ensure consistent practices.

Qualifications:
• Extensive experience securing on-premises and cloud environments (must have AWS), with strong working knowledge of cloud security models, logging, tagging strategies, ephemeral resource tracking, and cross-platform operations; proven hands-on security engineering background in federal, regulated settings.
• 10+ years in securing information technology, plus 7+ years in hands-on security engineering built on a systems administration foundation including at least 3 years focused on cloud security and administration of Linux and Windows endpoints.
• Must have proven FEDERAL Security Engineering experience.
• Familiarity with AI/ML integration in security tooling and operations, supporting modern approaches to threat detection and remediation.
• Demonstrated expertise applying federal compliance frameworks (FISMA, NIST 800-53, FedRAMP, RMF), supporting system authorization processes (ATO, POA&M), and navigating complex governance and compliance requirements.
• Engineering-level experience with at least two security tools such as Tenable, Checkmarx, or Splunk, along with a strong understanding of vulnerability management, application security testing, and remediation workflows.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, cybersecurity, information technology, or related technical field (or equivalent technical experience); CISSP certification (or ability to obtain within 6 months).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a proven ability to produce clear security documentation and explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Desired Qualifications:
• Hands-on work experience with AI/ML automation, security event correlation, asset inventory tracking and SEIM management (preferably in SPLUNK), utilizing scripting or programming such as PowerShell, Bash, Python or equivalent and use of APIs
• Advanced Linux and Windows administration experience, Certified in AWS/AZURE/GCP
• Experience with container security (like Docker & Kubernetes)
• Master’s degree in computer science, Cybersecurity, Information Technology, or a related technical field

Source: LinkedIn