Senior CND Analyst — Cloud & Zero Trust Security

Akima; Alexandria (VA); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

Life Insurance

401(k)

PTO

Job summary

Akima Data Management seeks a mission‑driven Senior CND Analyst to lead advanced threat detection, incident response, and Zero Trust enforcement across enterprise and cloud environments in a high‑security setting.

The role requires top‑secret clearance, advanced Splunk expertise, and strong experience with Azure security monitoring. On‑site work in Alexandria, VA with a focus on rapid containment and secure operations.

Qualifications

• Active Top-Secret clearance with SCI eligibility.
• Advanced Splunk experience (search, dashboards, correlation rules, UEBA).
• Strong firewall/IDS/IPS monitoring skills.
• Endpoint detection and response expertise.
• Cloud-security monitoring across Azure cloud and hybrid environments.
• Strong analytical writing for incident reports and leadership briefings.
• Bachelor’s degree or 10+ years of relevant experience; professional certs preferred.
• Professional certification (e.g., CISSP, CEH, Azure Certified) required.

Responsibilities

• Perform continuous monitoring across cloud, hybrid, and on‑premise environments using Splunk, firewall telemetry, endpoint security tools, and cloud‑native logs.
• Lead triage, investigation, containment, and remediation of high‑severity security incidents; coordinate actions across CND, engineering, and mission teams.
• Apply identity‑centric security, micro‑segmentation, continuous authentication, and least‑privilege controls during investigations and response activities.
• Build, tune, and maintain correlation rules, dashboards, and detection logic to identify anomalous behavior, lateral movement, and cloud‑based threats.
• Monitor firewall logs, IDS/IPS alerts, segmentation policies, and cross‑domain data flows to detect malicious activity and policy violations.
• Use tools such as Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike, or equivalent to investigate host‑based alerts, isolate compromised devices, and validate endpoint compliance.
• Review cloud service inventories, access patterns, and configuration baselines to identify security gaps, misconfigurations, and suspicious activity.
• Monitor API usage, authentication flows, and cross‑domain interactions for anomalies or unauthorized access attempts.
• Produce incident reports, weekly/monthly summaries, decision briefs, and leadership updates on threat trends, response actions, and risk areas.
• Identify monitoring gaps, detection blind spots, and opportunities to enhance automation, resilience, and SOC workflows.
• Work closely with enterprise architects, system owners, developers, and mission stakeholders to ensure secure operations and rapid response.
• Validate security controls within CI/CD pipelines, API usage, and application behavior as part of incident investigations.
• Participate in proof‑of‑concepts for new detection technologies, cloud‑security tools, and Zero Trust monitoring capabilities.
• Maintain incident timelines, evidence artifacts, CND procedures, and version‑controlled monitoring documentation.

Skills

Threat detection

Incident response

Zero Trust

Threat hunting

Analytical writing

Education

Bachelor’s degree / 10+ years experience

10+ years of relevant experience in lieu of a degree

Tools

Splunk

Microsoft Defender

CrowdStrike

Azure Cloud Monitoring

Job description

Akima Data Management seeks a mission‑driven Senior CND Analyst to lead advanced threat detection, incident response, and Zero Trust enforcement across enterprise and cloud environments in a high‑security setting.

The role requires top‑secret clearance, advanced Splunk expertise, and strong experience with Azure security monitoring. On‑site work in Alexandria, VA with a focus on rapid containment and secure operations.