Strategic Technical Campaign Lead – Autonomous Cyber

Peraton’s Strategic Innovation Group is seeking a visionary Cyber Technology Leader with a focus on strategic innovation, to serve as a principal architect of enterprise-level autonomous cyber systems—you will envision, design, and operationalize cutting edge R&D (CRAD and IRAD) ideas into mission-ready, operationally resilient Autonomous Cyber capabilities. This role will provide a rare opportunity to lead and merge advanced technical engineering innovation with strategic impact, while shaping the future direction of the business and our customer’s critical missions. This role is pivotal in fusing deep technical subject matter expertise with strategic vision toward the delivery of impactful solutions aligned with national security priorities and campaign-level initiatives such as Zero Trust (ZT) architectures, AI-driven cyber defense, self-healing networks, and proactive cyber threat hunting and response. 

This position is more than technical oversight—it's a senior engineering, customer facing role with strategic influence, where end-to-end system thinking, mission integration, and technology vision converge. You will play a critical role in shaping enterprise cyber campaigns, architecting innovative solutions, and building autonomous cyber systems that will provide the advantage in the cyber landscape, well into the future. This role demands a deep commitment to regulatory compliance, ethical AI integration, and the consideration of security protocols inherent to the intelligence, defense, and national security domains. 

Your key responsibilities may include: 

• • Leading End-to-End Autonomous Cyber Design & Concept Engineering: Own the technical architecture and system engineering solutions for autonomous cyber capabilities from concept through operational transition, ensuring integration, scalability, and mission readiness of emerging technologies. This includes self-defending networks, adaptive cyber operations, and AI-driven response systems. 

• • Ensuring Regulatory Compliance & Ethical AI Integration: Lead the design and implementation of autonomous cyber systems in strict adherence to national security policies, cybersecurity regulations (e.g., NIST, DoD Directives, ICDs), and ethical AI principals, ensuring legal, responsible, and auditable deployment within both classified and unclassified environments. 

• • Drive Innovation-to-Impact Transformation: Translate R&D outputs into executable, fieldable systems that address mission-critical needs across cyber defense, offensive cyber, and cyber resilience domains. 

• • Architect Across Mission Domains: Engineer interoperable, cross-domain solutions that integrate with enterprise IT/OT environments, cloud infrastructures, and national security systems, ensuring seamless and secure operations. 

• • Shape and Support Enterprise Strategy: Collaborate with corporate strategy, technology leadership, and our customers, to align engineering direction with strategic campaign priorities and investment roadmaps, particularly around advanced persistent threat (APT) mitigation, zero trust implementation, and AI/ML integration in cyber. 

• • Guide Technical Capture & Business Development: Serve as senior engineering lead on high-priority captures, providing solution architecture, system performance analysis, technical narratives, and differentiators that resonate with mission buyers. Brief advanced technical topics to both customers and internal stakeholders. 

• • Support High-Value Campaigns and R&D Strategy: Lead engineering planning for major enterprise campaigns, ensuring alignment between R&D portfolios, customer needs, and opportunity timing. 

• • Build & Leverage Innovation Ecosystems: Drive collaboration with external technology sources including national labs, FFRDCs, universities, and commercial innovators to accelerate system evolution and mission impact. 

• • Champion Mission-Driven Tech Insertion: Prioritize and guide transition of emerging technologies—such as AI-enabled threat detection and response, self-healing network architectures, deceptive technologies, and automated offensive cyber capabilities—into resilient, deployable architectures, ensuring they meet rigorous security accreditation and authorization (A&A) processes. 

• • Conduct Technical Reviews and Mission Assurance Assessments: Serve as senior design authority on internal reviews, engineering gates, and readiness evaluations across key programs and R&D initiatives, focusing on system validation, ethical AI considerations, and resilience testing, and compliance with all applicable government and industry standards. 

• • Advise Senior Leaders: Influence executive-level decisions with technical insight into system feasibility, risk, integration timelines, and transition pathways. 

General Experience: 

• • 16+ years of experience with a background in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical discipline within the Defense, Intelligence, national security ecosystem, or closely related commercial innovators. 

• • Proven track record leading development and transition efforts across autonomous cyber, AI/ML in cyber, network security, and offensive/defensive cyber operations. 

• • Experience delivering engineering solutions in accordance with Federal Acquisition the Regulation (FAR) and navigating within complex federal regulations, security mandates, and federal directives within classified environments. 

• • Excellent ability to communicate complex systems concepts to internal and external technical and executive audiences. 

• • Skilled in leading diverse technical teams, mentoring engineering talent, and driving outcomes across organizational boundaries. 

• • Experience influencing corporate or enterprise strategy through technical leadership and engineering planning in the cyber domain. 

• • Experience with MBSE, DoDAF/UAF, system trades, architecture analysis, TRLs, and federal R&D transition vehicles (OTAs, SBIR/STTR, etc.). 

• • Ability to connect system engineering outcomes to mission value, cost-benefit tradeoffs, and enterprise growth strategies. 

• • Experience supporting high-value proposals, customer shaping activities, and enterprise investment decisions. 

• • This position requires a minimum of an active/current Top Secret security clearance with ability to obtain SCI. 

Technical Expertise: 

• • Deep understanding of Autonomous Cyber Operations (ACO), including AI/ML for automated threat detection, analysis, response, and remediation. 

• • Strong background in network security architectures, zero trust principles, identify and access management, data protection, and cloud security, with a proven ability to implement solutions compliance with NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST SP 800-53, DoD 8570/8140, ISO 27001, and other relevant government standards. 

• • Familiarity with offensive cyber capabilities, red teaming, pen testing, vulnerability management, and exploit analysis/development.  

• • Experience with self-healing networks, deceptive technologies, cyber-physical systems security, and SOAR platforms. 

• • Understanding of AI/ML model development, adversarial machine learning, and MLOps in cyber, with an emphasis on secure deployments. 

• • Knowledge of cyber resilience frameworks, incident response automation, continuous monitoring, and Authorization to Operate (ATO) processes. 

Peraton is a next-generation national security company that drives missions of consequence spanning the globe and extending to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. As the world’s leading mission capability integrator and transformative enterprise IT provider, we deliver trusted, highly differentiated solutions and technologies to protect our nation and allies. Peraton operates at the critical nexus between traditional and nontraditional threats across all domains: land, sea, space, air, and cyberspace. The company serves as a valued partner to essential government agencies and supports every branch of the U.S. armed forces. Each day, our employees do the can’t be done by solving the most daunting challenges facing our customers. Visit peraton.com to learn how we’re keeping people around the world safe and secure.