Technical Lead (Threat Modeling, PSIRT)

Job description

Who You'll Work With Arista Networks is seeking a deeply technical and operationally strategic Technical Lead, Product Security Program & Operations. In this role, you will serve as a core link between Arista’s engineering groups, external security researchers, federal stakeholders, and executive leadership. This is not a purely administrative role; it requires a strong technical background in network operating systems, exploit mechanics, and secure software development. You will drive the product security vulnerability lifecycle, lead threat modeling and penetration testing strategies for Arista’s switch architecture, integrate security mechanisms into our software development lifecycle (SDLC), and ensure our federal cloud environments maintain an aggressive security posture. Alternate Work Locations: Dallas, TX | Raleigh, NC What Will You Do? Key Responsibilities 1. Technical PSIRT, Vulnerability & Exploit Analysis Vulnerability Lifecycle Management: Drive the end-to-end process of turning discovered or reported vulnerabilities within Arista products into verified, highly accurate security advisories. Technical Triage & Root Cause Analysis: Triage incoming vulnerability reports from internal testing, automated tools, and external researchers. Evaluate exploitability, proof-of-concepts (PoCs), and determine blast radius/severity using CVSS and CWE frameworks. Developer Enablement & Advisory: Partner directly with software engineers to explain root-cause vulnerabilities, provide remediation guidance, and oversee the drafting and structural validation of technical security advisories. Coordinated Disclosure: Coordinate with the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), MITRE, and external research teams to ensure professional, precise, and timely disclosure. Metrics Strategy: Analyze vulnerability trends to identify systemic security gaps, delivering data-driven architecture recommendations to senior engineering leadership. 2. Advanced Penetration Testing & Switch Architecture Security Program Oversight & Scoping: Manage the comprehensive execution of third-party security testing and red-teaming across Arista’s product portfolio. Architectural Threat Modeling: Translate Arista’s switch architecture, control/data plane separation, and Sysdb-driven state mechanisms into clear threat vectors to scope high-value targets for penetration testers. Remediation & Validation: Critically review penetration testing findings, distinguish theoretical risks from practical exploits, and validate that engineering fixes comprehensively eliminate the underlying architectural susceptibility to security issues. Executive Reporting: Distill complex cryptographic, hardware, or software vulnerabilities into clear risk profiles for executive management and enterprise customers. 3. Secure SDLC & DevSecOps Engineering Shifting Left: Architect, implement, and optimize security checkpoints throughout Arista’s development lifecycles to detect flaws before code reaches production. Pipeline Integration: Drive the adoption and tuning of automated security tooling (SAST, DAST, SCA, and container scanning) directly into the CI/CD infrastructure. Secure Coding Standards: Define and evangelize secure coding practices, threat modeling principles (e.g., STRIDE), and framework-level mitigations to mitigate common software flaws (memory unsafety, injection, privilege escalation). Continuous Improvement: Audit existing development workflows to eliminate friction between engineering velocity and product security compliance. 4. Federal Cloud Security Administration & Infrastructure Monitoring Federal Workspace Administration: Securely administer and monitor the dedicated Google Workspace environment for Arista Federal. Compliance Hardening: Configure and audit cloud infrastructure settings in strict accordance with industry frameworks and federal regulations (e.g., FedRAMP, NIST 800-53). Threat Hunting & Incident Response: Actively monitor logging, alerting systems, and audit trails to identify, investigate, and remediate suspicious activity or misconfigurations. Change Management: Lead security risk assessments for all proposed system alterations in coordination with Arista IT Security and Federal Management. 5. Customer Trust & Regulatory Compliance Technical Customer Engagement: Act as the primary technical subject matter expert (SME) during deep-dive security discussions with enterprise and federal customers. Regulatory Advisory: Authoritatively address complex customer compliance inquiries regarding product architecture, supply chain integrity, and federal security mandates. Security Vulnerabilities & Exploit Theory: Deep understanding of software vulnerabilities, exploit mechanics (e.g., buffer overflows, race conditions, logical bypasses, dependency vulnerabilities), cryptography, and modern mitigation techniques. Strong familiarity with standard frameworks including CVSS, CWE, OWASP Top 10, and MITRE ATT Networking & Switch Architecture: In-depth understanding of network switch architecture, composition, and management. Knowledge of network operating system internals (ideally Linux-based, such as Arista EOS), control plane protection, data plane forwarding, ASIC-level considerations, and protocols (e.g., BGP, OSPF, gRPC, SNMP). Secure Development & SDLC: Robust knowledge of modern software engineering methodologies, version control (Git), and CI/CD pipelines. Hands-on experience integrating and managing AppSec tools (SAST/DAST) and implementing Threat Modeling practices in an enterprise environment. Experience & Operational Skills Experience: 7+ years of experience in Product Security, Software Security Engineering, PSIRT operations, or Advanced Cloud Security Administration. Cloud Infrastructure: Proven experience hardening enterprise/federal cloud spaces, specifically Google Workspace or major cloud providers (AWS/GCP), with an emphasis on access controls, logging, and audit logs. Compliance Standards: Familiarity with Federal, State, and Local compliance regulations (e.g., FedRAMP, NIST, FIPS). Communication: Exceptional ability to articulate highly technical security flaws and architectural concepts clearly to software developers, enterprise customers, and non-technical business executives alike. #LI-TC1 Arista stands out as an engineering-centric company. Our leadership, including founders and engineering managers, are all engineers who understand sound software engineering principles and the importance of doing things right. We hire globally into our diverse team. At Arista, engineers have complete ownership of their projects. Our management structure is flat and streamlined, and software engineering is led by those who understand it best. We prioritize the development and utilization of test automation tools. Our engineers have access to every part of the company, providing opportunities to work across various domains. Arista is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with development offices in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, and the US. We consider all our R&D centers equal in stature. Join us to shape the future of networking and be part of a culture that values invention, quality, respect, and fun. Arista Networks is an equal opportunity employer. Arista makes all hiring and employment-related decisions in a non-discriminatory manner without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or any other factor determined to be unlawful under applicable federal, state, or law law. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines. Arista Networks is an industry leader in data-driven, client-to-cloud networking for large data center, campus and routing environments. Arista is a well-established and profitable company with over $8 billion in revenue. Arista’s award-winning platforms, ranging in Ethernet speeds up to 800G bits per second, redefine scalability, agility, and resilience. Arista is a founding member of the Ultra Ethernet consortium. We have shipped over 20 million cloud networking ports worldwide with Cloud Vision and EOS, an advanced network operating system. Arista is committed to open standards, and its products are available worldwide directly and through partners. At Arista, we value the diversity of thought and perspectives each employee brings. We believe fostering an inclusive environment where individuals from various backgrounds and experiences feel welcome is essential for driving creativity and innovation. Our commitment to excellence has earned us several prestigious awards, such as the Great Place to Work Survey for Best Engineering Team and Best Company for Diversity, Compensation, and Work-Life Balance. At Arista, we take pride in our track record of success and strive to maintain the highest quality and performance standards in everything we do.