Federal Security Engineering Manager

Get to Know Us Horizon3 is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find and fix and verify exploitable attack vectors before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZeroTM platform, delivers production-safe autonomous pentests and other key assessment operations that scale across the largest internal, external, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. NodeZero has been adopted by organizations of all sizes, from small educational institutions to government agencies and Global 100 enterprises. It is used by ITOps/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.  We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools, false positives resulting in alert fatigue, blind spots, "checkbox” security culture, cybersecurity skills shortage, and the long lead time and expense of hiring outside consultants. Collectively, we are a team of learn it alls, committed to a culture of respect, collaboration, ownership, and results.   Summary/Overview As we expand our offering to Federal and Defense customers, we are building dedicated, compliant environments that meet FedRAMP and DoD Impact Level 4/5 (IL4/IL5) requirements. We are hiring a Federal Security Engineering Manager to build and lead the team that maintains the security of those environments. This is a founding leadership role and will be responsible for building the team, setting its direction, and holding it accountable for delivering secure cloud architecture, detection, and response for our federal boundaries. This role will recruit and develop a security engineering team, define what right looks like, remove obstacles, and represent the team to leadership and partner organizations. WHAT YOU'LL DO Build and Lead the Federal Security Engineering Team - Recruit, hire, and onboard a team of cloud, SIEM, and SOC security engineers dedicated to our 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. Lead Federal Cloud Security Engineering - Set the technical direction for how the team secures our federal cloud environments, including identity and access, network segmentation, encryption and key management, hardening baselines, and logging. - Ensure cloud security engineers design and implement controls that meet FedRAMP and DoD Cloud Computing SRG requirements, and that those controls are automated through Infrastructure as Code 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, federated identity, and privileged access. Lead Federal Detection and Response - Define the vision and roadmap for SIEM, log aggregation, and detection within the federal boundary, and ensure the team's work satisfies audit-logging and retention requirements. - Build the SOC function for the federal environment: establish functional requirements, operating model, on-call structure, escalation paths, and documentation standards. - Drive an automation-first culture, guiding the team toward SOAR and AI/ML-assisted triage, investigation, and response. - Direct the development of detection content and threat hunting aligned to MITRE ATT&CK, and 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, coordination across teams, post-incident review, and required customer and government incident reporting. Communicate, Measure, and Manage - Define team metrics (e.g., MTTD/MTTR, detection coverage, false-positive rates, control and tooling health) and report on posture, risk, and priorities to leadership and federal stakeholders. - Own the team's budget, tooling strategy, and vendor relationships, including selection of FedRAMP-authorized and IL-appropriate tools. - Develop and maintain the team's security standards, SOPs, and engineering practices, aligned to NIST 800-53/800-171, FedRAMP, the DoD SRG, CIS, and MITRE ATT&CK. - Evaluate and recommend new tools, techniques, and controls to improve security posture within federal constraints. - Stay current on emerging threats and federal security requirements, and translate them into team priorities. WHAT YOU'LL BRING Required - 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. - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Technology Context - Cloud: AWS GovCloud, Kubernetes and container security - IaC / CI/CD: Crossplane, GitLab, ArgoCD - SIEM / SOAR: ELK Stack, AWS GuardDuty - Detection: Sigma, YARA, MITRE ATT&CK, EDR/XDR - Hardening and Scanning: STIG/SCAP, CIS benchmarks, cloud posture management Preferred - Experience standing up security capabilities for a SaaS product entering the federal market. - Prior experience operating within FedRAMP or DoD IL4/IL5 environments, in a hands-on or leadership capacity. - Background in incident management, detection engineering, or logs/events processing. - Experience with SOC build-out and scaling in a high-growth company. - Active clearance. - Certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, AWS Certified Security – Specialty, GCIH/GCIA, or similar. WHO YOU ARE - A Team Builder: You have created teams, not just inherited them. You hire for potential and craft, and you know how to build an organization that won't break when the business triples. - A Technical Leader: You stay close enough to the technology to set the bar, challenge designs, and earn your engineers' respect, while letting them own the work. - An Automation Advocate: You push your team to treat security and detection as engineering problems and to automate for security, not only speed. - A Framework Thinker: You can map a visibility or control gap to NIST 800-53, the DoD SRG, or MITRE ATT&CK and prioritize the fix. - Operationally Disciplined: You hold a high standard for documentation and process so the team stays effective as it grows. - Extreme Ownership: You are accountable for the team's outcomes, including reducing risk, MTTR, and false positives. Other duties Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice. Travel Required This job may require up to 5% of travel to be successful. Job-related travel expenses are reviewed and must be approved by your manager.   Perks of Horizon3 - Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive. - Growth Opportunities: Be part of a dynamic and growing team with numerous career development opportunities. - Innovative Culture: Work in a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. - Hybrid & Remote Work: We embrace a mix of remote and hybrid work models depending on role and location, including our Chicago office, where some roles require regular in-office presence. - Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive salary, equity and benefits. Our benefits include health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave. Compensation and Values At Horizon3, we believe that our people are our greatest asset, and our compensation philosophy reflects this core value. We are committed to fostering an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and rewarded for their contributions. Our compensation structure is designed to be fair, competitive, and transparent, ensuring that every team member is recognized and compensated equitably across roles, levels, and locations. In accordance with various State’s transparency regulations, we provide the following salary range information for this position: - Base salary range: $175,950 - $230,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills. - Additional compensation: All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options. You Belong Here Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, or any other legally protected status by law. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion means we strive to attract, develop, and retain a workforce that reflects the varied communities we serve. We believe that diverse perspectives drive innovation and strengthen our ability to create cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. At Horizon3, every team member is valued and supported in an environment that encourages personal and professional growth. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, and we encourage all qualified individuals to apply. Come be a part of Horizon3, where your unique contributions are recognized, and your potential is limitless. Other Duties Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.  Application Note In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this…