Senior Cyber Security Engineer – Lead Penetration Tester - Herndon VA

Job Description

Janus Soft is seeking an elite Cyber Security Engineer to join a highly technical, mission-critical team providing advanced, in-depth penetration testing services in support of enterprise cyber security equities. In this role, you will act as a premier ethical hacker, proactively targeting, assessing, and exploiting risks and vulnerabilities across complex, large-scale information systems. Your mission goes beyond discovery—you will provide senior national security decision-makers with the documented, actionable intelligence required to drive strategic investment and defensive engineering initiatives.

As a core technical leader, you will analyze complex network architectures, review program-level documentation (including system designs, requirements specifications, and security plans), and engineer comprehensive penetration testing procedures. You will conduct hands-on, adversarial testing across Windows, Linux, and virtualized enterprise platforms, subsequently authoring threat mitigation plans and recommending robust defensive countermeasures. This role demands a technical expert capable of guiding technical exchange meetings (TEMs), collaborating with application review boards (ARBs), and briefing executive management on critical risk postures.

Mandatory Skills

• Clearance: Active TS/SCI with Full Scope Polygraph is strictly required.

• Domain Expertise: Extensive professional work experience within cyber security or a related IT field, featuring dedicated expertise in cyber penetration testing.

• Exploitation & Adversarial Tactics: Demonstrated mastery in applying computer attack methods, system exploitation techniques, and leveraging adversarial tactics during hands-on security testing.

• Platform Security: Advanced working knowledge of cyber security principles tailored to Linux, Windows, and virtual platforms.

• Architecture & Network Analysis: Proven experience performing network security analysis, analyzing network architectures, using network management tools, and designing, testing, or implementing enterprise IT security architecture.

• Systems Infrastructure: Deep experience testing or reviewing system configuration, development, and design specifically around enterprise systems and hypervisors.

• Windows Engineering: Practical experience designing, testing, or implementing complex Windows installations.

• Risk Management: Demonstrated experience developing risk management methodologies and analyzing technical test results to build actionable risk and threat mitigation plans.

Desired Skills

• Executive Communication: Proven ability to synthesize complex technical vulnerability results and communicate risk postures effectively to senior executives.

• Autonomy: A track record of executing highly complex technical tasks successfully with minimal direction.

• Policy & Community Engagement: Experience researching, evaluating, and developing enterprise security policies and guidance, alongside active participation in public and private information security groups and organizations.

• Education: A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or another related scientific or technical discipline.

Certifications

• Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) (Desired)

• Global Information Assurance Certification Penetration Tester (GPEN) (Desired)

• Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) (Desired)