Application Security Engineer at Leidos
Ashburn, VA
$107,900–$195,050from the description
Jul 14, 2026
Ashburn, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role supports a federal cybersecurity program protecting Customs and Border Protection networks, focusing on application security across the full software development lifecycle. Day-to-day work involves static and dynamic code analysis, container security, vulnerability remediation, configuration management, and integrating ML/AI into security tooling. It suits an experienced application security engineer holding an active Top Secret/SCI clearance.
Senior level · 8+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $152,225 (middle half $125,286–$177,673). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The role sits at the intersection of application security analysis (15-1212) and software/security engineering (15-1252); the primary day-to-day work — SAST/DAST scanning, vulnerability remediation, container security, and integrating security into SDLC — leans toward Information Security Analyst, but the ML/AI integration and scripting emphasis add meaningful software-development weight.
The basic qualifications require a BS degree with 8–12 years of experience OR, per the preferred qualifications, a Master's with 1–2 years focused on SAST/SCA/DAST. The BS + 8 years path is treated as the primary gate for the degree requirement and the overall years minimum.
TS/SCI clearance is an explicit hard gate ('Must have a Top Secret Clearance with SCI').
The role requires reporting to the Ashburn, VA office up to 5 days per week — fully on-site; remote is not offered.
Kubernetes/Rancher, Cloudera, Salt/Ansible, CI/CD, Elasticsearch, and GitLab all appear under the 'Preferred Qualifications' heading and are therefore not hard gates.
SDLC and Agile are listed in the required qualifications as knowledge/experience areas rather than named tools, but they are concrete enough methodological requirements to surface here; they are not soft skills.
Machine Learning and AI are called out in the primary responsibilities as a required implementation task ('Develop, deploy, maintain, and/or assist in the implementation and integration of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)'), making them a hard gate on the role's scope.
Requires a TS/SCI clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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