Senior Zero Trust / Enterprise Security Architect

Work Location and On-Site/Telework Requirements: Hybrid – NIH, Bethesda, MD. On site for stakeholder workshops and pilots (typically 1–2 days/week during the first 120 days, then as scheduled).

Citizenship: U.S. Citizenship required

Clearance: All staff must obtain NIH suitability and a PIV credential and be fluent in English. Anyone doing risk or vulnerability testing needs a current T2 (BI) or higher investigation.

Salary Range: $165,000-$175,000 yearly salary

 

Overview:

You will be the lead architect for NIH's Future State Zero Trust Architecture under the NIH Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) Support Services task order for the NIH Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO). Working in the Architecture Pod, you will lead Task 2 and support Tasks 3, 4, and 7. You will produce the reference architectures and design patterns that application, platform, HPC, clinical, and laboratory teams across NIH's 27 ICs will build to.

 

Responsibilities:

• Lead Task 2: define the NIH Future State ZTA across identity, device, network, application/workload, and data, with automation, orchestration, and continuous monitoring.
• With OITA, ISAO, and CIT service owners, inventory every centrally provided capability: enterprise ICAM and PIV/derived credentials, endpoint management, segmentation and secure access, API gateways, data classification and encryption, and logging/SIEM. Build the ZTA Pillar Centrally Provided Services Matrix (Subtask 2.1, due at 120 days).
• Author gold-standard reference architectures for cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments (Subtask 2.2), broken down into NIST SP 800-207 Policy Engine, Policy Administrator, and Policy Enforcement Point components.
• Tailor those architectures to NIH workload families: clinical systems (FHIR gateways, PostgreSQL, React), HPC and bioinformatics (Linux/Slurm, Nextflow, object storage), extramural grants (Appian/COTS, eRA integrations), IC business applications (Salesforce, ServiceNow, M365, Java/Angular), and laboratory/IoT instruments (Cryo-EM, mass spectrometry, LIMS).
• Set per-pillar Advanced and Optimal targets against the CISA ZTMM v2.0 and build the risk-informed remediation roadmap.
• Co-lead Task 3 AI use-case discovery with the AI/ML Solutions Architect. Contribute architecture criteria to the Task 4 ZTA Overlay and to the Task 7 architecture-review checkpoints.
• Validate each pattern with at least one IC team before publication, and brief decisions to the Architecture Review Board and domain teams.
• Maintain artifacts as Git-versioned architecture-as-code and publish them to the OCIO ZTA Wiki.

 

Tools & Technology Environment: Identity (Microsoft Entra ID/Active Directory, Ping Identity, Okta, PIV/derived credentials); SSE/ZTNA (e.g., Zscaler, Palo Alto Prisma Access); microsegmentation; EDR/MDM (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Intune, CrowdStrike, Forescout); SIEM/SOAR (Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel); AWS and Azure; Git; Visio/draw.io.

 

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree plus 10+ years of security architecture experience.
• Deep, practical knowledge of NIST SP 800-207/207A, the CISA ZTMM v2.0, OMB M-22-09, NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, and NIST SP 800-63-4.
• A track record of designing cloud and hybrid Zero Trust reference architectures for large, federated enterprises.
• Strong written artifacts: architecture diagrams, decision records, and design patterns with control mappings.
• Ability to obtain an NIH suitability determination and PIV credential; fluent in English.

 

Preferred Qualifications:

• CISSP, CISSP-ISSAP, SABSA, or TOGAF.
• Experience with research, academic, health, or other decentralized IT environments (HPC, clinical, laboratory).
• Familiarity with the CISA Zero Trust guidance for cloud, NSA Zero Trust guidance, TIC 3.0, and the HHS Federated EA Framework.
• Vendor certifications (Microsoft, Zscaler, Palo Alto, Okta, AWS, Azure).
• Current National Institutes of Health (NIH) or U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) experience is highly preferred.