Agile Defense
Vulnerability Assessment (VA) Team Lead (CBP)
11600 Sunrise Valley Dr Ste 440, Reston, VA 20191
Hybrid · Regular · $155k–$175k (as posted)
First seen by offpeak October 4, 2026
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Title: Vulnerability Assessment (VA) Team Lead (CBP) Clearance: Active Top Secret Clearance with SCI eligibility, ability to obtain and maintain a CBP Background Investigation (CBP BI) and EOD, active BI strongly preferred. We can begin processing for candidates who do not hold one. Citizenship: U.S. Citizenship required Location: Reston, VA - Hybrid 3-5 days Salary Range: $155,000-175,000 Signing Bonus: $10,000 for candidates with an active CBP BI. Payable after 90 days; standard terms apply. Required Certification(s): One of the following: Active Certified Information Security Manager or Active Certified Information Security System Professional.
The Role
U.S. Customs and Border Protection runs continuous operations across more than 300 land, air, and sea ports of entry, plus Border Patrol stations and the Air and Marine Operations Center. Every system supporting that mission has weaknesses somewhere, and the job is not to pretend otherwise. It is to find them before someone else does, and to make sure the ones that matter actually get fixed instead of sitting on a list nobody prioritizes. You lead vulnerability assessment for this program. You will run the scanning, assessment, and prioritization work that finds weaknesses across the environment, and you own getting real remediation out of that work rather than a report that lands and goes nowhere. You will coordinate closely with the network, cloud, and security engineering teams who fix what you find, and hand confirmed exploitable findings to the threat hunt and incident response leads when they need that context. One thing is worth knowing before you apply. A vulnerability scan is the easy part. What makes this role hard is getting busy engineering teams to prioritize a fix for something that has not caused a problem yet, and doing that without becoming the person everyone tunes out.What Success Looks Like
Objective 1: Find what actually matters, not just what a scanner flags- Findings get prioritized by real exploitability and impact to this environment, not just a generic severity score.
- You can tell the difference between a finding that is theoretical and one that is genuinely reachable, and you communicate that difference.
- Assessment coverage reaches the systems that matter most, not just the ones that are easiest to scan.
- Findings that get flagged as critical get fixed, and you can show the trend closing over time.
- Engineering teams bring you into the fix, not just the finding, when the remediation is not obvious.
- Recurring finding types get traced to a build standard or process gap and closed at the source.
- What is reported as open, in progress, or accepted matches reality at any given time.
- Accepted risk decisions are documented with a real justification, not left as findings that quietly stopped getting tracked.
- Leadership gets an accurate picture of the environment's exposure, including what has not been assessed yet.
- New systems and changes get assessed before they go live, not discovered later in a routine scan.
- Assessment methodology improves based on what real findings turned out to matter, rather than staying static.
- You can name where assessment coverage is thin and what it would take to close that gap.
What You Bring
Minimum reuired experience- One of the following certifications: CISM or CISSP
- Minimum of five (5) years’ experience performing vulnerability assessments for an enterprise network, this includes endpoints, network devices, IOT devices, web applications, databases or wireless access points.
- Analyzing vulnerabilities and providing assessments and remediation instructions; knowledgeable to maintain a repository of VA application issues and report application issues to USG Government customers.
- Experience with applying Information Systems Security principles and methods.
- Experience with Application Security implementation; understanding of Firewall Management and Advanced Threat Protection; familiarity with Access Control, Authorization, Intrusion Prevention and Intrusion Detection.
- Familiar with FISMA compliance and Risk Management Framework.B
- Bachelor’s Degree computer science, engineering, cybersecurity or STEM.
- You have led vulnerability assessment or penetration testing work that produced findings engineering teams actually acted on.
- You have prioritized findings by real exploitability rather than by scanner severity score alone, and can describe how.
- You have worked in a federal or highly regulated environment and know what that adds to remediation timelines and risk acceptance processes.
- You have gotten a team to fix something that had not caused a visible problem yet, and can describe how you made the case.
- You hold an active CBP BI, a fitness determination at another DHS component, or an active DoD clearance. Any of these shortens your start date.
- Certifications such as OSCP, GPEN, or equivalent are useful, but they are not a substitute for having driven real remediation.
- Any of the foloowing certifications for VAT Analysts: GPEN, GWAPT, GSNA, GAWN, GWEB, GXPN, CEH, OSCP, OSEE, OSCE, OSWP.
- Leadership experience of a technical team.
A note on timing
We are staffing this program now. If you already hold an active CBP BI and EOD, your start date is short and a $10,000 signing bonus comes with the role, payable after 90 days under standard terms. We would like to talk this week. If you do not, we can begin processing a CBP BI for you. That takes months rather than weeks, so applying now means joining a pipeline rather than starting immediately. We would rather tell you that up front than have you find out after you apply.Employee Benefits
Agile's benefits offerings include, dependent upon position, Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, Holiday Pay, short-term and long-term Disability, Retirement and Learning and Development opportunities as well as other optional benefit elections. Our Core Values Employees of Agile Defense are our number one priority, and the importance we place on our culture here is fundamental. Our culture is alive and evolving, but it always stays true to its roots. Here, you are valued as a family member, and we believe that we can accomplish great things together. Agile Defense has been highly successful in the past few years due to our employees and the culture we create together. What makes us Agile? We call it the 6Hs, the values that define our culture and guide everything we do. Together, these values infuse vibrancy, integrity, and a tireless work ethic into advancing the most important national security and critical civilian missions. It's how we show up every day. It's who we are.- Happy - Be Infectious. Happiness multiplies and creates a positive and connected environment where motivation and satisfaction have an outsized effect on everything we do.
- Helpful - Be Supportive. Being helpful is the foundation of teamwork, resulting in a supportive atmosphere where collaboration flourishes, and collective success is celebrated.
- Honest - Be Trustworthy. Honesty serves as our compass, ensuring transparent communication and ethical conduct, essential to who we are and the complex domains we support.
- Humble - Be Grounded. Success is not achieved alone, humility ensures a culture of mutual respect, encouraging open communication, and a willingness to learn from one another and take on any task.
- Hungry - Be Eager. Our hunger for excellence drives an insatiable appetite for innovation and continuous improvement, propelling us forward in the face of new and unprecedented challenges.
- Hustle - Be Driven. Hustle is reflected in our relentless work ethic, where we are each committed to going above and beyond to advance the mission and achieve success.