Cyber Security Engineer

Punch Cyber Corp; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Punch Cyber Corp in Reston, VA, seeks an experienced security architect to lead Zero Trust initiatives across people, processes, and technologies. You will design and implement identity-centric controls, network segmentation, and continuous verification to reduce risk and enable secure hybrid environments.

Ideal candidates bring deep knowledge of NIST guidelines, strong architecture experience, and a collaborative mindset to work across teams and after-hours maintenance as needed.

Qualifications

• 7 years of experience with a bachelor’s degree or 9 years of total experience.
• Ability to work in both an individual and team environment.
• Flexibility to support after hours maintenance activities.
• Must be able to obtain a Position of Public Trust.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the Zero Trust security architecture and strategy aligned with business and security objectives.
• Provide recommendations regarding agency perimeter UTM devices IAW NIST 800-53 and industry best practices for Cisco, Juniper, Riverbed, and Fortinate.
• Develop Zero Trust roadmaps, maturity models, and implementation plans across people, processes, applications, data, devices, and infrastructure.
• Establish identity-centric security controls, including strong authentication, MFA, SSO, identity governance, and least-privilege access.
• Design network segmentation and micro-segmentation to limit lateral movement and reduce attack surfaces.
• Implement continuous verification of users, devices, workloads, applications, and network connections.
• Define policy-based access controls using identity, device posture, risk, location, application, and behavioral signals.
• Establish device trust and endpoint security requirements, including device compliance, health checks, encryption, patching, and EDR coverage.
• Develop data-centric security controls, including data classification, encryption, DLP, access governance, and rights management.
• Define security telemetry and continuous monitoring requirements to support real-time risk-based access decisions.
• Integrate Zero Trust controls with cloud, hybrid-cloud, SaaS, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments.
• Assess existing infrastructure against Zero Trust maturity frameworks and reference architectures, such as NIST Zero Trust Architecture.
• Identify security gaps, vulnerabilities, architectural risks, and legacy dependencies that prevent Zero Trust adoption.
• Create architecture standards, patterns, reference designs, and security requirements for engineering and project teams.
• Continuously evolve the architecture based on new threats, technologies, business requirements, and emerging Zero Trust capabilities.

Skills

Zero Trust security

Security architecture

Identity management

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

NIST 800-53

Cloud security architectures

Job description

About Us

PUNCH Cyber Analytics Group (PUNCH) is a Virginia-based, small business founded in 2012 operating as a cohesive team that incorporates the sum of our group’s diverse skills, talents, and resources toward our collective passion: advancing data analytics to impact cyber operations. PUNCH is a two-time Inc. Magazine ‘Best Workplaces’ awardee offering unique benefits and personal touches to provide a positive work-life experience for our team. PUNCH brings unique qualifications, resources, and past-performance that make us suitable to address the goals of our diverse customer-base. Further, we have past and current experience supporting cyber operations and cyber ML-based research, with well over 100 years of collective experience from our collaborative, multi-disciplinary team.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the organization’s Zero Trust security architecture and strategy aligned with business and security objectives.
• Provide recommendations regarding the Agency's perimeter UTM devices IAW NIST 800-53 and industry best practices for Cisco, Juniper, Riverbed, and Fortinate
• Develop Zero Trust roadmaps, maturity models, and implementation plans across people, processes, applications, data, devices, and infrastructure.
• Establish identity-centric security controls, including strong authentication, MFA, SSO, identity governance, and least-privilege access.
• Design network segmentation and micro-segmentation to limit lateral movement and reduce attack surfaces.
• Implement continuous verification of users, devices, workloads, applications, and network connections rather than relying on implicit trust.
• Define policy-based access controls using identity, device posture, risk, location, application, and behavioral signals.
• Establish device trust and endpoint security requirements, including device compliance, health checks, encryption, patching, and EDR coverage.
• Develop data-centric security controls, including data classification, encryption, DLP, access governance, and rights management.
• Define security telemetry and continuous monitoring requirements to support real-time risk-based access decisions.
• Integrate Zero Trust controls with cloud, hybrid-cloud, SaaS, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments.
• Assess existing infrastructure against Zero Trust maturity frameworks and reference architectures, such as NIST Zero Trust Architecture.
• Identify security gaps, vulnerabilities, architectural risks, and legacy dependencies that prevent Zero Trust adoption.
• Create architecture standards, patterns, reference designs, and security requirements for engineering and project teams.
• Continuously evolve the architecture based on new threats, technologies, business requirements, and emerging Zero Trust capabilities.

Minimum Qualifications

To be considered for this position, you must minimally meet the knowledge, skills, and abilities listed below:

• 7 years of experience with a bachelor’s degree or 9 years of total experience
• Ability to work in both an individual and team environment
• Flexibility to support after hours maintenance activities
• Must be able to obtain a Position of Public Trust