Senior Cybersecurity Engineer - Applications

Title: Senior Cybersecurity Engineer, Applications
Location: Rockville, MD (hybrid preferred, open to remote for exceptional candidates)
Target Start Date:
Type:
Salary / Pay Rate:

Why Work Here

This is an established life sciences company whose technology supports scientific research, giving the security team work that genuinely matters. You would bring application security depth to a dedicated cybersecurity team, with a real seat at the table in architecture reviews and change approvals. The work spans secure development, cloud and container security, and the broader security program, so there is plenty of room to grow beyond a single specialty. The team is hands-on and collaborative, and staying current through conferences, training, and industry events is part of the role. It is a stable, regulated environment where good security practice is valued and supported.

About the Role

This role sits on the cybersecurity team and focuses on strengthening the security posture across the organization. The primary focus is application security, bringing depth in securing software, applications, and the environments where they are built and deployed. The engineer also contributes across the broader cybersecurity program and is expected to stay current on industry trends. The position reports to a senior cybersecurity architect.

Responsibilities

• Investigate, analyze, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents, events, and threats following the incident response lifecycle.
• Remediate application vulnerabilities and guide engineering and development teams on preventative measures.
• Build security into the software development lifecycle, including static analysis, dynamic analysis, and software composition analysis within build and deployment pipelines.
• Perform threat modeling and secure design reviews for new and existing applications, and provide security recommendations to development and architecture teams.
• Represent security in architecture design reviews and the Change Advisory Board so security considerations are addressed before changes are approved.
• Assess and strengthen the security of application hosting environments, including AWS workloads and containerized platforms.
• Coordinate external application penetration testing and manage findings through remediation.
• Engineer security solutions that reduce risk and strengthen the organization's security posture.
• Help develop and maintain security tools, techniques, and procedures that support security testing, vulnerability detection, validation, and mitigation.
• Understand and evaluate best practices for both COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and custom developed applications.
• Help evaluate and assess security technologies to expand the organization's cybersecurity portfolio where appropriate.
• Keep current on application security and cloud industry updates through conferences, training, and events.
• Support continuous improvement of the security posture and provide hands-on support to address cybersecurity issues as they arise.
• Collect, report on, and continually improve security metrics.
• Continuously monitor and maintain an understanding of the security posture of application development tools, technologies, and libraries.

Required Skills

• Bachelor's degree in MIS, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field with a cybersecurity concentration, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• 5+ years of relevant cybersecurity experience, including proven depth in application or software security. Broader experience across other cybersecurity disciplines is valued, since this role contributes to the wider security program.
• Knowledge of secure coding best practices and frameworks, and of software supply chain risk, including dependency management and artifact repository controls.
• Working knowledge of OWASP resources, including the Top 10 and the Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS), plus hands-on experience with static analysis, dynamic analysis, and software composition analysis tools.
• Experience securing applications built on Java or .NET stacks, with familiarity in the development practices and common weaknesses of at least one.
• Knowledge of API security, authentication and authorization technologies (SSO, OAuth, OIDC, SAML), and session management practices.
• Working knowledge of AWS and cloud security controls for application workloads, including container and Kubernetes security.
• Knowledge of network, web server, and database security, including web application firewall concepts, along with malware analysis and incident response.
• Familiarity with industry security standards, access controls, and compliance requirements.
• Understanding of data security, including classification, encryption, DLP, and secrets management for credentials in code and pipelines.
• Ability to build, maintain, and report on metrics that measure how effective security controls are.

Bonus / Soft Skills

• Experience in regulated or validated environments (strongly desired).
• Experience in the life sciences industry.
• Industry certification such as GWAPT, GWEB, OSWE, CSSLP, OSCP, or CISSP.
• Experience with ISO 27001 or the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
• Scripting and automation skills in Bash, Python, PowerShell, or similar.
• Self-starter who takes ownership of security initiatives and drives them to completion with minimal supervision, hands-on and collaborative across teams.
• Effective communicator with a positive, confident attitude.
• Excellent writing skills, with the ability to produce well-formatted reports and customer-facing documentation.

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