Senior Cybersecurity Engineer – Security Engineering & Security Operations

Are you passionate about protecting critical public services and the systems that support them? Do you want to join a mission-driven cybersecurity team that values technical excellence, collaboration, and service to the community? If contributing to the security and resilience of a modern city appeals to you, this may be the opportunity you’re looking for.

The City of Tacoma is hiring up to two Senior Cybersecurity Engineers through a single, unified recruitment and interview process. Candidates will be considered for either the Security Engineering track or the Security Operations track based on their strengths, experience, and interests. You do not need to be an expert in both domains; we value depth in one track and collaboration across both.

Candidates will not only need to be technically gifted but will require essential skills of communication, collaboration, mentorship, and teamwork.

Senior Cybersecurity Engineers safeguard the technology, information systems, and critical services that keep the City running. These roles strengthen cybersecurity maturity aligned with the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Controls and the NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF) while supporting compliance obligations such as CJIS, HIPAA, PCI DSS, NERC CIP, and applicable RCW requirements.

Working collaboratively with Information Technology teams and business units, these positions enhance cybersecurity visibility, engineer reliable controls, reduce vulnerabilities, manage threats, and ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of City assets.

• Conduct secure design reviews and threat modeling for new systems and major changes; identify risks, propose controls, and document decisions.
• Engineer, deploy, integrate, and maintain cybersecurity tools such as SIEM pipelines, endpoint protection, identity security systems, and network security controls.
• Develop and maintain secure configuration baselines across operating systems, cloud platforms, and network infrastructure; monitor drift and drive remediation.
• Improve vulnerability management through engineering, ensuring scanning accuracy, coverage, asset associations, and workflow automation.
• Define and strengthen identity security requirements, including MFA, privileged access pathways, and conditional access policies.
• Perform cyber supply chain risk assessments for vendors, cloud services, data flows, and procurement processes.
• Produce compliance evidence and publish technical standards to support CJIS/HIPAA/PCI/NERC CIP/RCW requirements.
• Guide and mentor junior analysts and engineers in Security Engineering
• Promote a customer service-oriented approach to Security Engineering

• Design, tune, and manage SIEM/SOAR detection logic to improve alert fidelity and reduce false positives.
• Lead incident response and event triage, classifying, investigating, containing, and coordinating remediation of security events.
• Conduct proactive threat hunting across logs, endpoints, identities, and networks.
• Own operational vulnerability management including scanning, validation, prioritization, ticketing, and reporting against SLAs.
• Maintain and tune security tools including EDR, SOAR, email security filters, and log pipelines.
• Onboard log sources and verify telemetry quality, collaborating with IT owners to resolve data gaps.
• Develop SOC procedures and operational standards, producing reports and compliance evidence.
• Guide and mentor junior analysts and engineers in Security Operations
• Promote a customer service-oriented approach to Security Operations

Bachelor's degree in information technology, cybersecurity or directly related field

* Equivalency: 1 year of experience = 1 year of education

4 years of progressively responsible information technology experience related to assignment

• Security+ or related certification (CISSP, SANS, GIAC, COMTIA)
• As Assigned:
  Washington State Driver's License; some positions may require the ability to pass additional background checks and / or obtain additional certifications, with maintenance thereafter
• On-call participation is required
• Ability to obtain CJIS/HIPAA/PCI/NERC CIP access

• Secure design review and threat modeling
• Security tool engineering (SIEM pipelines, identity systems, endpoint agents)
• Configuration baselines and secure hardening
• Vulnerability engineering and automation
• Cyber supply chain assessment and vendor risk analysis
• CIS/NIST RMF implementation
• Scripting & Automation familiarity (Python/Power Shell)

• SIEM/SOAR administration and detection tuning
• Endpoint security administration
• Security investigations and incident response
• Threat hunting and MITRE ATT&CK familiarity
• Scripting familiarity (Python/Power Shell)
• Communication, customer service, and collaboration skills

Pay Details:

Hourly: $58.70 - $82.67

Annual Salary: $ - $

Employee…