Web Service Protection Engineer

Black Canyon Consulting; Bethesda (MD); On-site; USD 80,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

401(k) plan with employer contribution

Paid holidays

Vacation

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Black Canyon Consulting is seeking a Web Service Protection Engineer for a full-time onsite role at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, MD. You will develop protection metrics, analyze traffic, and manage cloud-based security controls to ensure the safety of high-volume web services.

To excel in this role, candidates should have a solid understanding of web service architectures, experience with cloud providers, and the ability to work across hybrid environments. A competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package are offered based on experience.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of high-volume web service architecture.
• Hands-on experience with a major cloud provider’s security stack.
• Solid grasp of HTTP/HTTPS protocol internals.
• Experience analyzing traffic using network and application-layer signals.
• Comfort working across hybrid infrastructure environments.

Responsibilities

• Develop and own protection metrics and alerting.
• Perform deep log analysis to identify abuse and attack patterns.
• Operate and tune cloud-based edge security controls.
• Enforce traffic controls to minimize impact on legitimate users.
• Monitor continuously and triage incidents.

Skills

High-volume web service architecture

Cloud provider’s security stack

HTTP/HTTPS protocol internals

Traffic analysis techniques

Access control and rate-limiting

Hybrid infrastructure environments

Job description

Black Canyon Consulting (BCC) is searching for a Web Service Protection Engineer to support the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). This opportunity is full‑time and onsite at the NCBI in Bethesda, MD.

NCBI is part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is the world’s premier biomedical center hosting over six million daily users seeking research, clinical, genetic, and other information that directly impacts biomedical research and public health. NCBI’s wide range of applications, platforms (node, python, Django, C++, etc.) and environments (big data, machine learning, multi‑cloud) serve more users than almost any other U.S. Government Agency.

We attract the best people in the business with a competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision coverage, a 401(k) plan with employer contribution, paid holidays, vacation, and tuition reimbursement.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Develop and own protection metrics and alerting—build dashboards and alert pipelines that surface anomalies across a range of network and application‑layer signals.
• Perform deep log analysis to identify overuse, scraping, abuse, DDoS, and attack patterns across millions of daily requests.
• Operate and tune cloud‑based edge security controls—configure and update security policies, rate limiting, and adaptive protection rules in response to evolving threats.
• Enforce traffic controls—apply a range of mitigation strategies to abusive traffic while minimizing impact on legitimate users.
• Monitor continuously and respond quickly—triage incidents and either resolve them directly or elevate to development or sysadmin teams with clear, actionable information.
• Support protection across a mixed cloud and on‑premises infrastructure—ensure consistent coverage across both environments.

Requirements

• Strong understanding of high‑volume web service architecture—how traffic flows, where bottlenecks and abuse vectors appear, and how load balancers and edge infrastructure make routing decisions.
• Hands‑on experience with a major cloud provider’s security and networking stack, including:
  • Global load balancing and traffic management
  • Edge‑layer security policy enforcement and WAF capabilities
  • Large‑scale log querying and metric‑driven alerting
• Solid grasp of HTTP/HTTPS protocol internals—headers, TLS behavior, connection patterns, and how these relate to traffic analysis and fingerprinting techniques.
• Experience analyzing traffic using network and application‑layer signals—including address‑based, organizational, and transport‑layer fingerprinting methods.
• Familiarity with common web server platforms, their log formats, and configuration.
• Ability to read, write, and tune access control and rate‑limiting rules under pressure.
• Comfort working across hybrid infrastructure environments.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with advanced abuse mitigation techniques, including traffic redirection and challenge‑response mechanisms.
• Scripting or automation experience (Python, Bash, or similar) for log parsing and rule generation.
• Prior work protecting high‑traffic government or research platforms.
• Familiarity with evolving attacker tradecraft and how modern scrapers and abusers adapt to countermeasures.

Benefits and Salary

We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience and location. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage; a 401(k) plan with employer matching; paid holidays; vacation; and tuition reimbursement.

As set forth in Black Canyon Consulting’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.