Information Systems Security Engineer / ISSE (HPC) at AMERICAN SYSTEMS
Arlington, VA
$165,000–$200,000from the description
Jul 5, 2026
Arlington, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior security engineering role focused on designing and maintaining security architectures for RHEL and Windows systems within a High Performance Computing environment that handles sensitive compartmented programs. Day-to-day work centers on manually authoring RMF/JSIG authorization artifacts, conducting hands-on compliance assessments, managing POA&Ms, and supporting incident response. Suited to a deeply experienced ISSE holding an active TS/SCI with SAP eligibility and a DoD 8140 IAT Level III certification.
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
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
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 (10)
The title is 'Information Systems Security Engineer (ISSE)' with no seniority level word, so advertised seniority is Unspecified; however, the requirements (11–12 years with a Bachelor's, or 8–10 with a Master's, plus 5+ years of hands-on security assessment) firmly support a Senior band.
Degree requirement: the JD states a Bachelor's in a STEM discipline as the baseline path (with more years); a Master's reduces the years required but is not the minimum — Bachelor's is the floor.
The DoD 8140 IAT Level III certification is a hard gate; CISSP is listed as the primary example with SecurityX, CCNP Security, CISA, GCED, GCIH, and CCSP as named equivalents — all captured in alternatives.
SAP eligibility (Special Access Program) is required alongside TS/SCI; this is captured in the clearance requirement as TopSecretSci.
ENS and DLP appear alongside Splunk/HBSS/McAfee ePO in the same required security-tools sentence but are product sub-features/components of the McAfee/Trellix suite rather than independently named standalone products, so they are not emitted as separate skills.
SSP authoring and POA&M management are named as concrete, required work products (not generic responsibilities) and are retained as skills; generic concepts such as 'continuous monitoring' and 'change management' are omitted.
The role is primarily security engineering/assessment rather than pure analysis, making 15-1212 the best fit; 15-1299 is noted as a runner-up given the engineering-heavy framing.
A $10,000 sign-on bonus is mentioned but is not part of the base salary range and cannot be represented in the compensation fields.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): NIST SP 800-53, POA&M management.
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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