Offensive Security Technical Lead

Accountabilities

• Serve as the senior technical authority for penetration testing and red-team delivery across concurrent assessment engagements.
• Establish and continuously improve assessment methodologies, rules of engagement, technical review gates, evidence requirements, severity standards, reporting expectations, and reusable technical playbooks.
• Review and approve engagement plans, adversary scenarios, infrastructure designs, tooling exceptions, exploitation approaches, data-handling controls, and other high-risk technical activities.
• Govern technical risk and ensure testing remains aligned with customer objectives, authorization requirements, safety controls, staffing, methodology, and delivery commitments.
• Lead technical teams by providing guidance, allocating specialized expertise, mentoring offensive security professionals, conducting technical readiness reviews, and resolving complex cross-domain challenges.
• Provide hands-on support for advanced network, application, Active Directory and identity, cloud, exploit-development, adversary-infrastructure, and defense-evasion challenges.
• Own final technical quality and acceptance of assessment reports, attack-path narratives, severity decisions, remediation recommendations, customer briefings, and purple-team scenarios.
• Lead technical discussions with customers and communicate complex technical findings in terms of mission, operational, and business risk.
• Coordinate with project management on schedules, staffing, dependencies, and technical escalations without assuming administrative project-management responsibilities.
• Capture lessons learned, measure technical quality and repeatability, and continuously evolve offensive-security capabilities as customer environments, processes, and tools develop.

Requirements

• U.S. citizenship required.
• No security clearance is required to begin employment; however, candidates must meet eligibility requirements for access to sensitive or classified information and be able to obtain a Department of Homeland Security Entrance on Duty (DHS EOD) authorization.
• 8+ years of progressively responsible offensive-security experience, including significant hands-on penetration testing and red-team or adversary-emulation work.
• 5+ years leading complex technical engagements, multiple concurrent assessments, or senior offensive-security teams.
• Expert-level ability to scope and safely govern testing across enterprise networks, applications and APIs, Windows/Active Directory and identity environments, Linux, AWS/Azure, external attack surfaces, and production systems.
• Demonstrated technical authority in rules of engagement, operational risk management, deconfliction, exploit validation, evidence quality, severity decisions, technical report acceptance, and customer out-briefing.
• Strong scripting, automation, and/or security tool-development capabilities, combined with sound judgment when evaluating high-risk technical approaches.
• At least one advanced hands-on offensive-security certification, such as OSEP/OSCE, OSWE, GXPN, GPEN, OSED/OSEE, CRTO/CRTL, or equivalent expert-level practical experience.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to translate complex technical attack paths into clear operational and mission risk for senior stakeholders.
• Ability to work effectively in customer-provided remote environments while following approved tools, rules of engagement, data-handling requirements, evidence controls, deconfliction procedures, and stop-work criteria.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 25% within the Continental United States.

Preferred qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience across offensive security, security research, adversary emulation, or technical-assessment leadership.
• Experience leading CISA, DHS, federal high-value-asset, critical-infrastructure, ICS/OT, or similarly sensitive assessment programs.
• Experience developing or maturing offensive-security programs, quality metrics, training initiatives, or repeatable technical delivery standards.
• Advanced expertise in cloud security, identity, exploit development, malware or payload development, detection engineering, or purple-team operations.
• Experience briefing senior government leadership and translating sophisticated technical findings into mission and operational impact.

Benefits

• Competitive annual salary range of approximately $105,100–$231,100, depending on geographic location, relevant experience, skills, education, certifications, and applicable contract requirements.
• Comprehensive healthcare and wellness benefits.
• Financial and retirement benefits designed to support employees and their families.
• Flexible time-off benefits supporting work-life balance.
• Continuing education, professional development, and learning resources.
• Career growth opportunities within complex federal cybersecurity and national-security missions.
• Flexible remote work environment.
• Regular exposure to advanced offensive-security challenges and high-impact government cyber programs.
• Full-time, regular employment.
• Up to 25% travel within the Continental United States.
• Opportunity to contribute to efforts focused on strengthening the security and resilience of critical national cyber infrastructure.