Cyber Security Engineer

Overview

At PNNL, our core capabilities are divided among major departments that we refer to as Directorates within the Lab, focused on a specific area of scientific research or other function, with its own leadership team and dedicated budget.

Our Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Earth and Biological Sciences, Physical and Computational Sciences, and Energy and Environment. In addition, we have an Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy, Office of Science user facility housed on the PNNL campus.

The National Security Directorate (NSD) drives science-based, mission-focused solutions to take on complex, real-world threats to our nation and the world.

The Emerging Threats and Technologies Division, part of the National Security Directorate, consists of over 400 scientists, engineers, and analysts with backgrounds in cyber, nuclear, intelligence, policy, data science, and other fields. We work in interdisciplinary project teams to provide innovative concepts that integrate policy, analytics, science, and technology into unique solutions.

PNNL is committed to researching and developing new technologies and methodologies by using rigorous techniques to investigate, validate and verify findings, and enable discovery of new cyber security solutions. A successful candidate is inquisitive, strives for continuous learning and will translate their expertise and passion to the cyber security field. This person will perform research and develop solutions that will have a tangible impact on the nation’s cyber defenses.

Your expertise and creativity will enhance an innovative culture, and you will be part of teams that are inventing new solutions for difficult problems in cyber security.

Responsibilities may include:

• Design, deploy, and operate environments, including virtualized and containerized environments, that support cyber research, testing, and training.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for repeatable, scalable deployment of systems, services, and cyber testbeds.
• Integrate hardware, hypervisors, orchestration tools, and monitoring platforms to build end‑to‑end cyber range and lab environments.
• Perform system and network configuration, hardening, patching, and baseline enforcement to support secure operations.
• Conduct performance, scalability, and reliability testing of virtualized and containerized infrastructure; analyze and report on findings.
• Implement and manage infrastructure monitoring and logging solutions to ensure system health, availability, and security visibility.
• Support cyber operations activities by standing up, configuring, and troubleshooting virtual networks, services, and applications.
• Develop scripts, automation, and tooling (e.g., Python, Ansible, Docker Compose) to streamline deployment, testing, and operational workflows.
• Participate in agile/sprint-based development, documenting work, reporting progress and blockers, and collaborating with cross‑functional teams.
• Contribute to the design and architecture of new methods and techniques for cyber defense, test range realism, and system resiliency.
• Support security assessments and penetration‑style testing activities (e.g., scanning, brute‑force, protocol/service testing) in controlled lab environments.
• Prepare technical documentation, test reports, and presentations for internal stakeholders, sponsors, and external collaborators.

Minimum Qualifications:

• BS/BA or higher in Cybersecurity or related field

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hands on experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) technologies such as Packer, Ansible, Terraform, and/or Pulumi.
• Experience with virtualization and hypervisor platforms such as Proxmox, VMware ESXi/vSphere, Hyper V, and related VM lifecycle management.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker, Docker Compose, and container based service stacks.
• Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools and practices for infrastructure health and activity tracking.
• Strong understanding of core cybersecurity concepts and practices, including system hardening, vulnerability scanning, and secure…