Defensive Cyber Enterprise Engineer

Why choose between doing meaningful work and having a fulfilling life? At MITRE, you can have both. That's because MITRE people are committed to tackling our nation's toughest challenges—and we're committed to the long-term well-being of our employees. MITRE is different from most technology companies. We are a not-for-profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest, with no commercial conflicts to influence what we do. The R&D centers we operate for the government create lasting impact in fields as diverse as cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. We're making a difference every day—working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world. Our workplace reflects our values. We offer competitive benefits, exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth, and a culture of innovation that embraces adaptability, collaboration, technical excellence, and people in partnership. If this sounds like the choice you want to make, then choose MITRE - and make a difference with us.

MITRE’s Cyber Defense – Installation to Edge Department (N175) is seeking a new Defensive Cyber Enterprise Engineer for the Defensive Cyber Effects (DCE) project. The successful candidate will tightly partner with our sponsor in acquiring, developing, and implementing cyber capabilities to defend United States Air Force (USAF) enterprise networks, mission systems, weapon systems, and control systems. This role is specifically focused on cross-capability and cross-organization integration and coordination, driving effectively alignment of defensive cyber capabilities with USAF enterprise architectures and external acquisition programs. This position will actively collaborate with both acquisition leadership and the operational community for the greatest mission impact and expedited fielding of capabilities.

The sponsor for this project is in San Antonio, TX, and requires continuous, on-site engagement for successful execution. For this project, the Defensive Cyber Enterprise Engineer is required to have a fundamental understanding of Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO) concepts and capabilities in support of Department of War (DoW) missions, cybersecurity concepts such as Zero Trust (ZT), enabling effective cyber situational awareness (SA), and implementing automated cyber response actions. Direct, hands-on experience with industry and open-source DCO tools as well as with cyber deception and Operational Technology (OT) monitoring and defense is preferred. Experience decomposing operational needs into system requirements is also desired as this sponsor is focused on acquiring USAF enterprise cyber capabilities. Additionally, the project will work to extend current and future defensive cyber capabilities to the tactical edge for effective operations within environments with potentially limited or denied communications and reduced hardware form factors. Lastly, the Defensive Cyber Enterprise Engineer needs to understand enabling concepts used in designing, developing, and fielding cyber capabilities, such as Internet Protocol (IP) networking and commercial cloud environments.

Roles & Responsibilities:

As the Defensive Cyber Enterprise Engineer, the successful candidate will:

Lead and Engage

• Work side-by-side with the sponsor to develop atrusted, collaborative relationship built on MITRE’s technical capabilities and expertise
• Directly engage with the USAF sponsor and operational community leadership to plan, coordinate, and effectively integrate DCO capabilities into existing USAF networks and mission systems
• Bring technical and USAF cyber operational experience to bear to drive key program decisions

Execute and Deliver Mission Impact

• Apply System-of-Systems engineering across multiple capabilities areas and USAF sponsors to deliver enterprise scale capabilities
• Engage in high-quality, data-driven technical analyses and proof of concepts with actionable recommendations for the sponsor
• Leverage existing projects and bodies of knowledge across MITRE to ensure leading practices and lessons learned are incorporated in sponsor recommendations

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Active Secret clearance with the ability to acquire and maintain a TS/SCI clearance
• U.S. Citizenship required.
• Strong knowledge of defensive cyber frameworks, capabilities and implementations, to include: Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO); commercial and open-source DCO capabilities; cyber security practices, cyber risk assessment frameworks and mitigation concepts; NIST cyber frameworks and publications
• Knowledge of existing USAF enterprise networks (AFNet), cyber security, and cyber operations capabilities
• Experience briefing senior leadership teams
• Strong written and verbal communications skills
• This position requires a minimum of 4 days a week on-site.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Active TS/SCI clearance
• Experience with DoW or USAF cyber operations
• Experience with DoW acquisition programs and applying effective Systems Engineering, from requirements definition to system development, to capability testing and fielding
• Knowledge of Artificial Intelligence as applied to DCO and cyber security
• Knowledge of cyber security and monitoring of Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS)
• Knowledge of commercial cloud and Internet Protocol (IP) networking

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):

Secret

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):

Top Secret/SCI

Salary compensation range and midpoint:

$158,800 - $198,500 - $238,200 Annual

Work Location Type:

Onsite

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.

MITRE intends to maintain a website that is fully accessible to all individuals. If you are unable to search or apply for jobs and would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of MITRE’s employment process, please email recruitinghelp@mitre.org for general support and collegerecruiting@mitre.org for intern positions. This service is for individuals requiring reasonable accommodation requests. Please note that vendor solicitations will not receive a reply.

Benefits information may be found here.

Copyright © 1997-2026, The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved. MITRE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. Material on this site may be copied and distributed with permission only.