Senior Penetration Tester & Assessments Lead
Job Title: Senior Penetration Tester & Assessments LeadJob Category: Information TechnologyTime Type: Full timeMinimum Clearance Required to Start: TS/SCIEmployee Type: RegularPercentage of Travel Required: Up to 25%Type of Travel: Continental US* * * The Opportunity:
CACI is seeking a Senior Penetration Tester and Assessments Lead to plan and lead controlled technical assessments of customer networks, applications, cloud workloads, identity systems, and externally exposed assets. This role is the senior engagement lead: it owns assessment scoping, technical planning, day-to-day execution, evidence quality, reporting, and customer out-brief support for assigned engagements. It works within the methodology and cross-engagement governance established by the Offensive Security Technical Lead.
This position will provide continuous technical assessment support for full‑time, proactive testing of externally and internally visible federal cyber assets. This expands federal visibility by conducting continual assessments of .gov domains, subdomains, and internet‑facing assets to uncover unknown exposures, validate vulnerabilities, and provide agencies with actionable remediation guidance. This role supports the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program’s mission to safeguard and secure cyberspace in an environment where the threat of cyber-attack is continuously growing and evolving and is responsible for enhancing the security, resilience, and reliability of the Nation’s cyber and communications infrastructure. The CDM Program defends the United States (U.S.) Federal Information Technology (IT) networks from cybersecurity threats by providing continuous monitoring sensors (tools), diagnosis, mitigation tools, and associated services to strengthen the security posture of Government networks.
Responsibilities:
- Lead assigned penetration-testing engagements from scoping and rules-of-engagement development through test planning, execution, reporting, out-briefing, and remediation clarification.
- Translate customer objectives, architecture, constraints, and safety requirements into a sequenced assessment plan with explicit authorization boundaries and deconfliction procedures.
- Direct and mentor junior testers while remaining hands-on with complex network, web/API, Active Directory/AD CS, Linux, Windows, AWS, Azure, and identity-focused attack paths.
- Validate vulnerabilities through safe manual testing and controlled exploitation; demonstrate privilege escalation, lateral movement, pivoting, and business or mission impact without disrupting operations or altering live data.
- Review scanner output and operator evidence, eliminate false positives, reproduce findings, assign defensible severity, and prioritize remediation using exploitability, exposure, mission impact, CVSS, CISA KEV, and relevant threat context.
- Ensure assessment reports clearly document scope, methods, evidence, attack paths, root causes, risk, and actionable remediation recommendations; perform technical quality review before delivery.
- Lead technical discussions and customer out-briefs, answer remediation questions, and support validation of corrected weaknesses.
- Escalate scope conflicts, safety issues, unanticipated access, and material findings to the Technical Lead and customer points of contact.
Qualifications:
Required:
• U.S. citizenship is required.
- The selected candidate must meet eligibility requirements for access to sensitive information and be able to obtain a Public Trust fitness determination (High Risk).
- Ability to work in customer-provided remote environments, use customer-approved tools, and comply with rules of engagement, data-handling requirements, evidence controls, deconfliction procedures, and stop-work criteria.
- Five or more years of hands-on penetration-testing or offensive-security experience, including at least two years leading technical assessments or small assessment teams.
- Demonstrated ability