Federal Security Engineering Lead

Horizon3; United States; Hybrid; USD 176,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Inclusive team

Growth opportunities

Innovative culture

Hybrid & remote work

Competitive compensation

Job summary

Horizon3 is seeking a Federal Security Engineering Manager to build and lead a security engineering team focused on FedRAMP and IL4/IL5 environments. You will shape cloud security, IAM, and logging, drive SIEM/detection, and scale the SOC for federal workloads.

As a founding leader, you will recruit, define roadmaps, and collaborate with engineering to embed security into the SDLC. A DoD-ready background and active security mindset are required for this role.

Qualifications

• U.S. citizenship and the ability to meet DoD personnel security requirements for IL4/IL5 environments. The ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance is required.
• 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
• Working knowledge of how FedRAMP High and DoD IL4/IL5 requirements shape cloud architecture, logging, and incident response, sufficient to guide engineers building to those standards.
• Strong technical foundation in cloud security architecture, IAM, encryption and key management, network security, secure SDLC, and Infrastructure as Code, sufficient to review designs and make sound technical decisions.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• Recruit, hire, and onboard a team of cloud, SIEM, and SOC security engineers dedicated to FedRAMP and IL4/IL5 environments, including candidates who meet U.S.-person and clearance requirements.
• 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.
• Set the technical direction for how the team secures federal cloud environments, including IAM, encryption, network security, and logging.
• Ensure cloud security engineers design and implement controls that meet FedRAMP and DoD SRG requirements, and 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.
• Set standards for identity and access management in federal environments, including least privilege and privileged access.
• Define the vision and roadmap for SIEM, log aggregation, and detection within the federal boundary, and ensure audit-logging and retention requirements.
• Build the SOC function for the federal environment: operating model, on-call structure, escalation paths, and documentation standards.
• Drive an automation-first culture toward SOAR and AI/ML-assisted triage, investigation, and response.
• Direct development of detection content and threat hunting aligned to MITRE ATT&CK; use internal pentests and purple-team exercises to steer improvements.
• Serve as the accountable leader for security incident response in the federal environments, including escalation and post-incident reviews.
• Define team metrics (e.g., MTTD/MTTR, detection coverage, false-positive rates, tooling health) and report on posture to leadership and federal stakeholders.
• Own the team's budget, tooling strategy, and vendor relationships, including selection of FedRAMP-authorized tools.
• Develop and maintain the team's security standards, SOPs, and engineering practices aligned to NIST 800-53/800-171, FedRAMP, DoD SRG, CIS, and MITRE ATT&CK.
• Evaluate and recommend new tools and controls to improve security posture within federal constraints.
• Stay current on emerging threats and federal security requirements and translate them into team priorities.

Skills

Cybersecurity experience

Cloud security

Security engineering leadership

FedRAMP/DoD knowledge

SIEM / SOC concepts

Communication skills

Architecture review

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

GitLab

ArgoCD

ELK Stack

Job description

Horizon3 is seeking a Federal Security Engineering Manager to build and lead a security engineering team focused on FedRAMP and IL4/IL5 environments. You will shape cloud security, IAM, and logging, drive SIEM/detection, and scale the SOC for federal workloads.

As a founding leader, you will recruit, define roadmaps, and collaborate with engineering to embed security into the SDLC. A DoD-ready background and active security mindset are required for this role.