Senior Security Subject Matter Expert (AI/ML, Cloud & Security)

Company Overview By Light Professional IT Services LLC readies warfighters and federal agencies with technology and systems engineered to connect, protect, and prepare individuals and teams for whatever comes next. Headquartered in McLean, VA, By Light supports defense, civilian, and commercial IT customers worldwide. Position Overview Senior Security Subject Matter Expert (SME) to support secure cloud systems in Federal and DoD environments. This role is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining security controls across cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity operations systems, while supporting the secure development of AI/ML capabilities and compliance with industry and government standards. The ideal candidate brings deep, hands-on cloud security and SOC engineering experience, a strong understanding of risk and compliance, and demonstrated ability to secure emerging technologies — including AI/ML systems, detection pipelines, and the products built on them. Responsibilities Design, implement, and maintain security controls across system development and operations. Secure AWS-based cloud environments, including STIG/NIST-aligned architectures and least-privilege IAM policies; provide working knowledge of Azure and/or Google Cloud. Perform system hardening, vulnerability scanning, monitoring, and incident response using tools such as Splunk, Security Onion, and Tenable. Analyze logs, develop alerts and detection content, and support forensic investigations and threat hunting. Support security architecture design and integration for new and existing systems, including infrastructure-as-code deployments (e.g., Terraform, GitLab CI/CD). Partner with engineering teams to embed security requirements throughout the AI/ML and cybersecurity product development lifecycle, from design through deployment. Perform security reviews of AI/ML models, pipelines, and training data prior to release, including adversarial risk, model integrity, data provenance, and an