Senior Detection Engineer

Nightwing provides technically advanced full-spectrum cyber, data operations, systems integration and intelligence mission support services to meet our customers’ most demanding challenges. Our capabilities include cyber space operations, cyber defense and resiliency, vulnerability research, ubiquitous technical surveillance, data intelligence, lifecycle mission enablement, and software modernization. Nightwing brings disruptive technologies, agility, and competitive offerings to customers in the intelligence community, defense, civil, and commercial markets.

Nightwing is supporting a U.S. Government customer to provide for onsite incident response to civilian Government agencies and critical asset owners who experience cyber-attacks, providing immediate investigation and resolution. Contract personnel perform investigations to characterize the severity of breaches, develop mitigation plans, and assist with the restoration of services.  Nightwing is seeking a Senior Detection Engineer in support of this contract.

The Senior Detection Engineer develops, validates, deploys, and tunes detection logic supporting proactive threat hunting across federal and critical infrastructure environments. The role combines advanced threat hunting tradecraft, adversary behavior analysis, and detection engineering to identify sophisticated threats, close visibility gaps, and improve detection effectiveness.

The engineer translates threat intelligence, hunt findings, and incident response lessons into reliable behavioral analytics, investigative queries, and automation. This work moves the team beyond individual hunts toward faster, repeatable, and scalable operations. Working across endpoint, network, identity, and cloud telemetry, the engineer selects detection methods based on available evidence and mission requirements. The position serves as the technical bridge between threat hunters, technical delivery teams, system engineers, analytics developers, and data scientists, turning operational findings into validated detections, automation, sensing improvements, and actionable capability requirements.

Job Responsibilities

• Develop and test hypotheses to uncover persistence, privilege escalation, credential access, lateral movement, command and control, and defense evasion. Correlate evidence across data sources and document defensible conclusions.
• Build behavioral analytics, correlation rules, signatures, and queries using endpoint, network, identity, cloud, and application telemetry. Target adversary techniques and activity sequences rather than individual indicators of compromise.
• Convert validated hunt methods, incident findings, and exercise results into reusable detections. Document each detection’s purpose, data requirements, investigative guidance, assumptions, and known limitations. Translate remaining gaps into technical requirements and acceptance criteria, recommend priorities through Threat Hunting governance, and verify that delivered capabilities meet the operational need.
• Test detections against representative malicious and benign activity using historical telemetry, controlled simulations, and purple team exercises. Verify intended behavior, evaluate evasion opportunities, and retain test evidence.
• Analyze false positives, false negatives, alert volume, thresholds, exclusions, and environmental baselines. Improve detection fidelity and alert context through enrichment and prioritization, while assessing the risk of suppressing legitimate threat activity.
• Assess the availability, reliability, and quality of sensors, tools, and data sources. Identify collection, parsing, normalization, and retention gaps and explain their impact on active hunts and production detections. Coordinate remediation with infrastructure teams and validate restored coverage.
• Develop and maintain automation for enrichment, query execution, analytical workflows, and detection validation, including SOAR playbooks where applicable. Tune data pipelines and queries for speed and responsiveness. Build in review, error handling, and recovery procedures.
• Maintain version-controlled content, peer reviews, release criteria, approval records, and rollback procedures. Revalidate analytics after platform, schema, environmental, or adversary tradecraft changes.
• Coordinate with hunters, incident responders, intelligence analysts, and platform engineers to integrate detections into investigative and automated workflows.
• Measure validated detection coverage, fidelity, actionable findings, and remaining gaps. Communicate the operational significance of technical findings and avoid equating rule counts with effective coverage.
• Partner with analytics developers and data scientists to develop and validate advanced analytics, including machine learning where appropriate. Assess operational value, false positives, data dependencies, and analytical limitations.
• Provide technical leadership supporting the section focal point for vulnerability management (VM) and threat hunting (TH) activities under applicable authorities. Develop exercises cenarios and expected detection outcomes, assess sensing failures, and track corrective actions.
• Evaluate new tools, data sources, and analytical methods against identified mission gaps. Document test results, operational limitations, and adoption recommendations.
• Review analytical work, mentor analysts, and set standards for query development, documentation, testing, deployment, and tuning. Develop and maintain detection engineering competencies, Job Qualification Requirements (JQRs), training scenarios, and practical assessments in coordination with section leadership.

 

Required Skills

• Must be a US Citizen
• Must have an active TS/SCI clearance
• Must be able to obtain DHS Suitability
• 10+ years of directly relevant experience

• Demonstrated senior-level experience in threat hunting, detection engineering, incident response, or closely related defensive cyber operations, including independent ownership of production detection content.
• Strong command of hypothesis development, adversary behavior analysis, iterative investigation, and evidence-based conclusions.
• Proven ability to develop, test, deploy, and tune production detections, explain their limitations, and assess the effects of exclusions and suppression.
• Advanced proficiency in one or more security query languages (KQL, SPL, EQL, ES|QL, or vendor-specific EDR languages), with the ability to adapt and optimize logic across platforms.
• Experience analyzing process execution, command lines, process ancestry, authentication, persistence mechanisms, network connections, and related enterprise telemetry.
• Understanding of Windows and Linux internals, enterprise networking, identity systems, cloud telemetry, and sophisticated adversary tradecraft.
• Practical experience mapping detections to MITRE ATT&CK and explaining the telemetry, test evidence, and limitations behind coverage claims.
• Proficiency in Python and PowerShell, or comparable languages, for analysis, enrichment, testing, and automation.
• Ability to clearly document detection intent, logic, validation results, investigation steps, and tuning decisions.
• Experience translating operational findings into engineering requirements and acceptance criteria, validating sensing effectiveness, and coordinating improvements across hunt analysts and delivery teams.
• undefinedDesired SkillsExperience with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, Cortex XDR, SentinelOne, Elastic, Splunk, or comparable platforms.Experience with portable detection content such as SigmaExperience with detection-as-code and automated testingSIEM data onboarding and pipeline tuning experienceExperience with adversary emulation and cyber exercise developmentFederal civilian or critical infrastructure cyber operations experienceExperience with maintaining detection engineering competencies, Job Qualification Requirements, training scenarios, and practical assessments

   

  Required EducationBachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or related field (Master's Degree preferred) Desired Certifications:GIAC Certified Detection Analyst (GCDA)GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA)GIAC Defending Advanced Threats (GDAT)GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst (GCIA)GIAC Certified Incident Handler (GCIH)GIAC Cyber Threat Intelligence (GCTI)Microsoft Certified: Security Operations Analyst Associate (SC-200)Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)undefined Syndeo: ESS-3688, ESS-3689

Salary & Benefits

The salary associated with this position ($122,000-$253,000) is commensurate with the selected candidate’s qualifications, years of relevant experience, and demonstrated level of expertise. Compensation will be determined based on these factors to ensure alignment with skills, responsibilities, and market standards.

Nightwing offers medical, vision and dental insurance coverage in addition to a 401k plan, PTO, Holidays, and additional insurances.

Nightwing is An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status, age or any other federally protected class.