Posting Title

Cybersecurity Researcher

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Location

CO - Golden

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Position Type

Regular

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Hours Per Week

40

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Working at NREL

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado is the nation's primary laboratory for research and development of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.

Join a team of world-class scientists, engineers, and visionaries dedicated to shaping the world’s energy future through cutting-edge research and innovation. From our vision to our NREL community, we are unique in the research community. We are focused on impact. From our work in basic sciences to systems engineering, analysis, demonstration, and deployment, we are focused on solving market-relevant problems that result in advanced, secure, reliable, and affordable energy systems. We are trusted clean energy leaders, developing cost-saving solutions that make U.S. industries more competitive, and support job creation and economic growth across rural and urban communities.

At NREL, we offer a unique, mission-driven work environment with cutting-edge facilities and multidisciplinary research teams. NREL's environment offers strong partnerships with industry, academia, and other national laboratories, as well as professional development opportunities and a competitive benefits package for employees.

Learn about NREL’s critical objectives: NREL's Mission and Vision.

Job Description

The Cybersecurity Threat Analysis Group (CTAG) within NREL’s Cybersecurity Research Center performs research to make cybersecurity an enabling part of the energy transition. This is primarily accomplished through engaging with energy sector partners, government program offices, and national security organizations. Research areas within CTAG include energy system modeling and simulation, threat to consequence risk analysis, hardware & software security, and supply chain security. 

  

Researchers within CTAG have the opportunity to drive NREL research in energy system security and advance a rapidly growing cybersecurity portfolio. Team members work alongside current NREL research staff to utilize the best-in-class ARIES Cyber Range to deploy applicable large scale test environments, perform hardware-in-the-loop technology experiments, and collaborate with other laboratory and government partners. 

  

CTAG is seeking an experienced senior cybersecurity research security professional to lead the execution of its growing portfolio of work. The successful candidate will bring a strong technical security background with a focus on developing and executing cybersecurity research within a laboratory environment, knowledge of cutting-edge adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, experience working within complex cybersecurity programs, a passion for leading and driving new research in the space, and the ability to collaborate with partners from across national labs, the Department of Energy, industry, and national security partners. 

Responsibilities, knowledge, and experiences include:

• Knowledge of adversarial tactics principles and practices
• Skill in translating operational requirements into security controls
• Knowledge of threat intelligence principles and practices
• Knowledge of critical infrastructure systems and software
• Knowledge of industry hardware and software commercial vendors and their associated configuration and maintenance practices
• Knowledge of systems security engineering (SSE) principles and practices
• Perform cybersecurity testing of developed applications and systems
• Knowledge of cybersecurity threat characteristics
• Knowledge of cyber defense tools and techniques
• Knowledge of evaluation and validation principles and practices
• Skill in systems integration testing
• Skill in performing and interpreting test results
• Ability to collaborate with fellow researchers, Department of Energy staff as well as industrial partners to ensure research relevance and impact
• In addition to technical research, the role requires technical writing, presentation of research materials at conferences, symposia, and sponsor review meetings, direct customer and stakeholder engagement
• Skill in writing scripts and developing applications to automate data collection, processing, and analysis tasks in cybersecurity contexts

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Basic Qualifications

Researcher I