Principal Targeting Analyst
Target development for cyber operations, red-team engagements, and applied R&D
Position Overview:
Position: Principal Targeting Analyst
Job Type: Full-time
Location: Ft. Meade, MD (Hybrid)
Clearance Requirements: US Citizen &TS/SCI
Experience: 8+ years
What You'll Do
SIXGEN is seeking a Principal Targeting Analyst to build and lead an organic targeting and collection capability that strengthens our offensive cyber, red-team, and adversary-emulation missions. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an analyst-engineer hybrid who enjoys solving hard collection problems, developing targets from a cold start, and turning operational experience into automated, mission-ready capability.
As a Principal Targeting Analyst, you'll pair deep OSINT and managed-attribution tradecraft with professional foreign-language proficiency, applied AI engineering, and real software-development ability. You'll partner with operators, engineers, and program teams to deliver timely targeting and access intelligence, mature SIXGEN's collection methodologies and tooling, and mentor analysts as the capability grows.
Whether you're developing a target for a critical customer mission, automating collection at scale, or shaping the technical direction of a new capability, your operational credibility and technical judgment will help drive mission success across the organization.
Key Responsibilities
Target Development and Key Operations
- Conduct end-to-end target development against threat actors, and adversary infrastructure — from initial requirement through finished, decision-ready intelligence.
- Direct collection across the surface, deep, and dark web, closed forums, encrypted messaging platforms, and regional ecosystems beyond the coverage of commercial data sources.
- Perform authorized threat-actor engagement and elicitation; track initial-access brokers, exploit sellers, and access markets relevant to mission objectives.
- Conduct lawful analysis of credential, breach, and infostealer-log datasets, plus cryptocurrency tracing and target deanonymization, to identify access vectors and attribute infrastructure and operators.
- Deliver timely targeting updates and access intelligence in support of red-team and operational engagements; author finished intelligence and brief senior stakeholders and customers.
Persona Lifecycle & Attribution-Resistant Infrastructure
- Establish and govern durable, non-attributable personas spanning multiple regions — programmatic creation, automated aging and backstopping, sustainment, and OPSEC-safe access control.
- Design and maintain managed-attribution infrastructure: VPS estates, egress and redirector architectures, fingerprint control, and compartmented access paths.
- Manage OPSEC-compliant procurement and resourcing practices that support persona creation, infrastructure acquisition, and operational sustainment in a controlled, auditable manner.
- Author and enforce the governing SOPs and defensive operating standards that keep the capability secure and compliant.
AI Engineering, Software Development & Automation
- Design and deploy agentic AI workflows and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers that automate discovery, monitoring, collection, and enrichment across the capability.
- Apply LLMs and multimodal models to real-time translation, entity extraction, data labeling, and semantic summarization of text, image, and video at scale — with evaluation harnesses that keep automated output accurate and auditable.
- Build production-grade collection tooling, scrapers, and API integrations in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Bash; architect ingestion pipelines that move raw collection into structured, queryable platforms.
- Stand up cloud and serverless infrastructure (AWS or equivalent) and analyst-facing applications that reduce triage time and operational friction.
- Evaluate and unify commercial data sources for baseline collection while prototyping core tooling in-house, focusing engineering effort on hardening validated, high-value capabilities.
Language, Regional Exploitation & Leadership
- Apply professional foreign-language proficiency to collect, exploit, and contextualize target-language material that machine translation alone cannot resolve, and operate personas credibly within target-language environments.
- Help architect, lead, and scale the capability over time — from initial standup through automation to a durable, standalone targeting function.
- Onboard, mentor, and develop analysts; serve as technical lead and primary briefer for cross-team and customer-facing engagements.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Intelligence Studies, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent experience may be considered.
- 8+ years in intelligence analysis, targeting, OSINT collection, SIGINT, computer network exploitation, or a closely related discipline.
- Active TS/SCI clearance.
- Demonstrated expertise in OSINT tradecraft and managed attribution — persona creation and sustainment, deep and dark web collection, and OPSEC-compliant operational practice.
- Professional working proficiency (ILR 2+ / DLPT equivalent) in at least one mission-relevant foreign language. Mandarin Chinese strongly preferred; Russian, Farsi, Arabic, Korean, or Spanish also of high interest.
- Hands-on experience designing and deploying AI/LLM systems (agentic workflows, MCP servers, prompt and tool-use engineering, or retrieval-augmented pipelines) in an operational rather than experimental capacity.
- Proficiency in Python plus at least one of JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, or C/C++, with a track record of shipping and maintaining working tools, automated pipelines, and API integrations.
- Working knowledge of TCP/IP networking, DNS, and Linux and Windows operating system internals.
- Proven analytic tradecraft and the ability to produce finished intelligence and brief senior stakeholders under time-sensitive conditions.
Preferred Qualifications
- TS/SCI with CI polygraph; background supporting national security, intelligence community, or federal missions.
- Experience supporting offensive cyber operations, red-team engagements, or threat-emulation missions in a targeting or reconnaissance role.
- NSA Certified Exploitation Analyst, CNODP, or equivalent formal exploitation training.
- Cryptocurrency tracing and blockchain analytics experience with commercial tracing platforms.
- Experience standing up a new capability, unit, or program from zero, including SOP authorship, staffing, and leading small technical teams.
Desired Traits
- A builder's instinct that sees a manual process and immediately asks how to automate it.
- Disciplined OPSEC mindset and unwavering attention to operational detail.
- Self-directed, high-ownership, and composed in fast-paced, high-consequence environments.
Example Technologies & Environments
- AI & Automation — Model Context Protocol (MCP), agentic frameworks, LLM and multimodal APIs, vector databases, RAG pipelines
- Development & Cloud — Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Bash, SQL; AWS serverless, Docker, Git and CI/CD; familiarity with Go, C/C++
- Collection & Tradecraft — Tor and I2P, closed forums and marketplaces, encrypted messaging, managed-attribution browsers, breach and infostealer datasets
- Analytics & Feeds — blockchain tracing, link analysis, entity resolution; commercial threat intelligence and dark web monitoring providers
Infrastructure — TCP/IP, DNS, SSH, VPN and tunneling, VPS estates and red
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
$185,000-$196,000
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. The final salary offer will be determined after a thorough review of the candidate's background and alignment with the role.
Additionally, SIXGEN offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:
- Employer-paid health insurance premiums (medical, dental, vision) for you and your family
- Employer-paid short/long term disability insurance and basic life/AD&D insurance
- 401K with a 4% employer contribution
- Professional development reimbursement options available (training, certification, education, etc)
- Flexible and remote work policies for most positions
- Flexible PTO and holiday schedule
OUR COMMITMENT
SIXGEN is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We ensure that all applicants are considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, marital status, ancestry, projected veteran status, or any other protected group or class.
We are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that values diversity in our people, reflecting the communities we serve and our customer base. We strive to attract and retain a diverse talent pool and create an environment where everyone is empowered to be their authentic selves at work.
