Defensive Cybersecurity Engineer/SOC SME

The Mitre Corporation is seeking a Defensive Cybersecurity Engineer/SOC SME to support MITRE’s Defensive Cyber Operations. This role brings SOC subject matter expertise to government sponsors, helping improve defensive cyber capabilities, detection coverage, and SOC workflows aligned to MITRE ATT&CK, with an increasing focus on practical AI use cases for day-to-day operations. The position is onsite in McLean, VA.

Compensation: USD 158,800 - 238,200 per year. Minimum experience: 3 years.

Responsibilities

• Provide SOC subject matter expertise to government sponsors, covering daily SOC operations, governance, and continuous process improvement.
• Turn complex defensive cybersecurity concepts into practical training tailored to sponsor network topologies, staffing, funding, and technical resources.
• Develop hands-on training scenarios and exercises that mirror real-world defensive cyber challenges and sponsor mission needs.
• Apply MITRE ATT&CK to guide threat hunting and develop defenses aligned to adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
• Design, develop, and refine security detections, analytics, and dashboards, including integrating new data sources into SIEM platforms.
• Develop, evaluate, and improve threat hunting methodologies to identify adversary activity and strengthen defensive capabilities.
• Research and evaluate emerging AI techniques such as machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, and reinforcement learning, with an emphasis on practical and cost-effective applications to daily SOC operations.
• Assess SOC capabilities, identify operational and technical gaps, and recommend improvements aligned to sponsor priorities and available resources.
• Validate detections and defensive workflows through testing and exercises, using results to improve detection coverage, reduce false positives, and refine operational procedures.

Requirements

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years with a Master’s degree; or PhD with 3 years’ experience; or an equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Minimum 3 years of operational experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
• Experience leveraging common SOC tools to defend an enterprise environment.
• Demonstrated experience conducting proactive cyber threat hunting across enterprise environments.
• Experience developing technical training content, curriculum, courseware, or other learning materials for cybersecurity audiences.
• Strong technical writing, presentation, and facilitation skills.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 25%, including international locations, to deliver training at customer sites.
• Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Top Secret U.S. Government issued Security Clearance.
• Requires a minimum of 3 days per week on-site.
• Requires U.S. citizenship to be considered for a security clearance.

Technologies

• MITRE ATT&CK, SIEM, Splunk, Elastic/ELK
• Machine learning, Deep learning, Generative AI, Reinforcement learning

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading technical training sessions for government, partner, or other technical audiences.
• Experience creating hands-on cybersecurity labs, exercises, or scenario-based learning materials.
• Experience with Splunk or Elastic/ELK.
• Comfort presenting to non-English-speaking audiences with translation support.
• Experience applying MITRE ATT&CK to support cybersecurity operations.
• Experience integrating AI-enabled workflows with cybersecurity platforms such as SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, threat-intelligence, case-management, or cloud-security platforms.

Clearance requirements: Top Secret is required, with the expectation that the candidate can obtain the clearance within one year from the date of hire.

Work location type: Onsite