Principal Cyber Protection/Sr. Principal Engineer (AHT)

About the role

Northrop Grumman Defense Systems (NGDS) is seeking a Cyber Protection Principal Engineer to maintain and enhance capabilities in support of DAF CLOUDworks at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Rome, NY, Warner Robins, GA, or Wright Patterson Air Force Base, OH. DAF CLOUDworks is a rapidly growing secure cloud program that encompasses 10+ teams spanning information security, infrastructure development, and cloud migration. You will be an active part of one of these teams providing technical support of customers leveraging DAF CLOUDworks. Along with operations and sustainment, DAF CLOUDworks focuses on modifying and enhancing offerings to implement new requirements, enhance functionality, increase efficiency, or lower operating/deployment. This role is focused on cloud penetration testing, adversarial emulation, red team operations, and container security assessments within a cleared DoD environment. The ideal candidate has a strong offensive security background and deep expertise in AWS and Azure environments.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical support to customers leveraging DAF CLOUDworks
• Conduct cloud penetration testing, adversarial emulation, red team operations, and container security assessments
• Perform security assessments in AWS and Azure environments
• Document findings under active assessment constraints
• Communicate risk clearly to both technical teams and senior leadership
• Develop and execute cyber tabletop exercises including threat scenario design, threat actor emulation planning, and after-action reporting
• Work within sprint and documentation workflows using Jira and Confluence
• Utilize GitHub for version controlled tooling and collaborative code review

Basic Qualifications

Level 3: Bachelor's degree in Science with 5+ years of software development experience; Master's with 3+ years of relative experience; or an additional 4 years of experience may be considered in lieu of degree.

Level 4: Bachelor's degree in Science with 8+ years of software development experience; Master's with 6+ years of relative experience; or an additional 4 years of experience may be considered in lieu of degree.

• Active Top Secret/SCI clearance and ability to obtain an IAT Level II or III certification (Security+, Pentest+, SecurityX) within 60 days of start
• Deep knowledge of cloud attack paths — IAM privilege escalation, metadata service abuse, misconfigured storage, cross-account trust exploitation, and OAuth/token abuse
• Proficiency with cloud-native offensive tooling including Pacu (AWS exploitation framework) and AADInternals (Azure/M365 offensive toolkit), alongside enumeration platforms such as ScoutSuite, CloudFox, Prowler, and ROADtools

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior DoD or IC classified environment experience
• Familiarity with adversary simulation platforms such as Cobalt Strike, Sliver, or Havoc
• Hands-on practitioner who has operated tools at depth across real engagements
• Experience developing and executing cyber tabletop exercises including threat scenario design, threat actor emulation planning, and after-action reporting
• Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes security assessments, including container escape techniques, privileged container abuse, K8s RBAC misconfigurations, service account token abuse, and CI/CD pipeline security across GitLab, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins environments
• Strong scripting skills in Bash, Python, and PowerShell
• Working knowledge of MITRE ATT&CK as applied to cloud and hybrid environments
• Preferred certifications include OSCP, CPTS, PNPT, GPEN, GXPN, GCPN, AWS Security Specialty, or AZ-500
• Day-to-day experience with Jira, Confluence, and GitHub

Pay

• Primary Level (Level 3): $98,400.00 - $155,400.00
• Secondary Level (Level 4): $122,800.00 - $193,900.00

Benefits

• Health insurance coverage
• Life and disability insurance
• Savings plan
• Company paid holidays
• Paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business
• Overtime and shift differential depending on position
• Discretionary bonus in addition to base pay
• Annual bonuses designed to reward individual contributions and allow employees to share in company results
• Long Term Incentives for employees in Vice President or Director positions