Federal Cloud Security Leader — Remote + Equity

VulnU; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 176,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid parental leave

Flexible PTO

Equity

Job summary

Horizon3.ai is seeking a Federal Security Engineering Manager to build and lead the team that maintains security for FedRAMP and DoD IL4/IL5 environments. You will recruit, develop, and guide security engineers focused on cloud security, SIEM, and incident response.

You will shape the security architecture, enforce FedRAMP/DoD controls, drive automation, SDLC integration, and alignment with NIST/CIS/MITRE ATT&CK, while partnering with leadership and government stakeholders.

Qualifications

• U.S. citizenship and the ability to meet DoD personnel security requirements for IL4/IL5 environments.
• 8+ years of experience in cybersecurity, including 5+ years in cloud security (AWS strongly preferred).
• 3+ years of experience managing or technically leading security engineers, with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong talent.
• Experience building and scaling a security engineering team.
• Strong technical foundation in cloud security architecture, IAM, encryption and key management, network security, secure SDLC, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Familiarity with SIEM and detection engineering concepts and with SOC operating models, including incident response and automation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including explaining technical risk and tradeoffs to engineers, executives, and government stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Build and Lead the Federal Security Engineering Team.
• Define the hiring roadmap, role profiles, interview loops, and sequencing for the team as the federal program scales.
• Lead, coach, and develop security engineers through regular 1:1s, goal setting, feedback, and career growth.
• Recognize and retain high performers.
• Set priorities and operating rhythms that balance strategic investments, day-to-day engineering support, and incident response.
• Lead horizontally with peers in commercial and partner teams.
• Lead Federal Cloud Security Engineering.
• Set the technical direction for how the team secures our federal cloud environments, including IAM, encryption, network security, and logging.
• Ensure controls meet FedRAMP/DoD SRG and are automated via IaC and policy-as-code.
• Review and approve team architecture decisions, threat models, and risk assessments for federal deployments and new features.
• Partner with Engineering to embed security into the SDLC and CI/CD pipelines for federal workloads.
• Define standards for identity and access management in federal environments, including least privilege and federated identity.
• Lead Federal Detection and Response.
• Define the vision and roadmap for SIEM, log aggregation, and detection in the federal boundary.
• Build the SOC function: on-call, escalation paths, documentation standards.
• Drive automation-first culture toward SOAR and AI/ML-assisted triage and response.
• Direct the development of detection content and threat hunting aligned to MITRE ATT&CK.
• Serve as the accountable leader for security incident response in federal environments.
• Communicate, Measure, and Manage.
• Define team metrics (MTTD/MTTR, detection coverage, false positives) and report posture to leadership.
• Own the team's budget, tooling strategy, and vendor relationships for FedRAMP/IL tools.
• Develop and maintain security standards, SOPs, and engineering practices.

Skills

Team leadership

Hiring & retention

Cloud security

Security architecture

Incident response

SIEM/SOAR

Automation / IaC

NIST/DoD compliance

Excellent communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or related field

Job description

Horizon3.ai is seeking a Federal Security Engineering Manager to build and lead the team that maintains security for FedRAMP and DoD IL4/IL5 environments. You will recruit, develop, and guide security engineers focused on cloud security, SIEM, and incident response.

You will shape the security architecture, enforce FedRAMP/DoD controls, drive automation, SDLC integration, and alignment with NIST/CIS/MITRE ATT&CK, while partnering with leadership and government stakeholders.