Advanced Specialist, Security Engineer

Job-:
Technology

Location:

Durham, NC, United States Workplace:
Hybrid

Schedule:

Full time Posted:
Closes:
Summary The Sovereign Team is the technical cybersecurity team of Pearson’s cybersecurity organization that works with the Lines of Business on contractual and regulatory obligations as it relates to sovereign requirements from countries around the world. We are not compliance or audit function — we are the deep technical experts on cloud, infrastructure and application security who hold the architectural knowledge that makes certifications such as FedRAMP, GovRAMP and Cyber Essentials Plus achievable and defensible.

As a Security Engineer, you will be a senior hands-on practitioner and technical individual contributor within the team, leading your own efforts. You will validate that architecture is actually deployed correctly against each sovereign requirement, design and operate the security tooling that underpins regulated boundaries, and provide oversight, direction and mentorship to engineers across the team. You will be expected to represent the team credibly with business units, enterprise security teams, external auditors and government customers — and to carry senior-level conversations, including budget and vendor discussions.

This is a technical role with leadership responsibility. It is not a people-management role, but you will set technical direction, mentor engineers, and act as the escalation point for complex sovereign security problems.

Key Responsibilities Sovereign architecture & readiness

Conduct readiness assessments for business units entering regulated or sovereign environments; review authorization boundaries and data flows.

Identify architectural blockers early across identity, cloud, application, logging and data controls.

Validate that proposed tools and services are suitable for the applicable boundary — and escalate where they are not.

Translate regulatory and contractual requirements into concrete technical designs, standards and hardening guidance.

Security engineering & approved tooling

Lead paved road tool selection, design and onboarding for regulated environments.

Define sovereign requirements for enterprise operated tooling, validate suitability, and coordinate with the enterprise owners who run the platforms.

Design and support boundary critical capability such as identity, WAF, DSPM and logging/SIEM architecture.

Identify and automate opportunities to reduce manual control validation and evidence gathering.

Ability to create scripts to support FedRAMP 20x to automate governance and compliance measurements for Rules and KSIsContinuous assurance & authorization maintenance

Own vulnerability and control health oversight across the sovereign estate, escalating risk trends and missed remediation commitments to the right owner.

Provide penetration test scope assurance and cadence support, including annual IT Health Check and ATO cycles.

Lead technical audit preparation and evidence quality review; support POA&M, KEV and STIG activity.

Interface directly with 3

PAOs, external assessors and government customers on technical control questions.

Technical leadership & enablement

Provide oversight, direction and advice to cybersecurity engineers by reviewing security designs and implementations.

Mentor and develop engineers on sovereign requirements, secure architecture and secure SDLC practice.

Build reusable playbooks, standards and onboarding material so team capability scales beyond individuals.

Serve as a single technical entry point for business units at project intake, security kickoff and tool onboarding.

Contribute to budget, licensing and vendor conversations, and communicate technical risk clearly to senior leadership.

Essential Skills & Experience Bachelor’s degree…