Senior Technical Advisor, McLean, VA; Must have an active TS/SCI with Polygraph, Immediate Hire

Senior Technical Advisor

McLean, VA
Full Time | On Site

Join Synertex LLC and bring your expertise to a mission that matters. We are seeking an experienced Senior Cybersecurity and Governance Advisor (CISO Advisor) to provide strategic guidance and technical expertise in support of a mission-critical Intelligence Community customer.

In this high-visibility role, you will advise senior leadership on enterprise cybersecurity strategy, governance, and risk management while helping navigate complex security policies, authorization decisions, and interagency coordination. The ideal candidate will combine deep cybersecurity expertise with executive-level communication skills and the ability to develop policy, influence strategic decisions, and drive security initiatives across multiple organizations.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Strategic Direction and Executive Advisory
  • Serves as a principal technical and strategic advisor to the CIO and CISO on enterprise IT, cybersecurity, technology modernization, digital capabilities, and associated mission risks.
  • Provides independent assessments and recommendations on significant technology initiatives, investments, architecture decisions, cybersecurity priorities, and emerging technology issues.
  • Helps translate customer mission priorities into actionable IT and cybersecurity strategies, objectives, roadmaps, and investment priorities.
  • Identifies emerging technology, cybersecurity, supply-chain, operational, and management issues requiring CIO/CISO attention.
  • Develops executive decision materials, alternatives analyses, briefings, issue papers, and recommendations for senior customer leadership.
  • Represents CIO/CISO equities in senior governance forums, working groups, investment reviews, and cross-organizational initiatives as designated.
• IT Budget, Investment, and Portfolio Management
  • Advises the CIO and CISO on formulation, prioritization, justification, execution, and oversight of the customer's IT and cybersecurity investment portfolio.
  • Assesses whether proposed technology investments align with mission priorities, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity requirements, modernization objectives, and identified risks.
  • Supports development of budget narratives, investment justifications, unfunded requirement assessments, and executive-level resource recommendations.
  • Reviews major programs and initiatives for cost, schedule, technical, cybersecurity, interoperability, and operational implications.
  • Works across CIO, CISO, CFO, acquisition, program management, and mission organizations to improve transparency and accountability for IT resources.
  • Identifies opportunities to reduce duplicative investment, address technical debt, rationalize legacy capabilities, and redirect resources toward higher-priority modernization and cybersecurity requirements.
• 3. Enterprise Risk Management
  • Provides an enterprise view of technology and cybersecurity risk, integrating mission impact, cybersecurity exposure, operational resilience, technology obsolescence, supply-chain concerns, and resource constraints.
  • Advises executives on technology risk acceptance, prioritization, mitigation, transfer, or avoidance decisions within established customer authorities.
  • Helps ensure significant IT and cyber risks are communicated in mission and business terms appropriate for executive decision-making.
  • Supports development of risk dashboards, executive risk briefings, decision memoranda, and remediation priorities.
  • Promotes integration between cybersecurity risk management, enterprise risk management, capital planning, acquisition, architecture, and mission governance.
  • Advises leadership on balancing mission enablement, security, cost, operational availability, and modernization risk rather than treating cybersecurity solely as a compliance function.
• 4. IT Modernization and Enterprise Transformation
  • Advises the CIO and CISO on development and execution of enterprise modernization strategies, including cloud computing, zero trust, identity and access management, data platforms, artificial intelligence, automation, network modernization, secure collaboration, and legacy system transformation.
  • Evaluates modernization proposals for technical feasibility, security, interoperability, scalability, resilience, mission impact, and total lifecycle considerations.
  • Identifies dependencies and barriers across infrastructure, cybersecurity, applications, data, workforce, acquisition, policy, and funding.
  • Promotes modernization approaches that reduce technical debt while strengthening cybersecurity and mission resilience.
  • Assesses emerging technologies and recommends where experimentation, adoption, additional controls, or further evaluation are warranted.
  • Helps establish measurable modernization outcomes and provides leadership with objective assessments of progress, risks, and corrective actions.
• 5. Enterprise IT Management and Governance
  • Supports the CIO's enterprise IT management responsibilities through governance, portfolio oversight, architecture alignment, performance management, and strategic planning.
  • Advises on enterprise standards and governance mechanisms supporting consistent technology decisions across customer components.
  • Analyzes cross-cutting issues that span infrastructure, applications, cybersecurity, data, acquisition, workforce, and mission systems.
  • Develops recommendations for improving IT service delivery, accountability, operating models, governance processes, and executive decision rights.
  • Supports CIO/CISO engagement with customer governance boards and IC-level forums.
  • Identifies systemic issues requiring enterprise-level rather than program-specific resolution.
• 6. Congressional, Oversight, and Executive Responses
  • Coordinates and develops technically accurate, policy-consistent responses to Congressional inquiries, questions for the record, requests for information, oversight reviews, audits, and senior executive taskings relating to IT and cybersecurity.
  • Synthesizes complex technical, budgetary, programmatic, and cybersecurity information into concise executive-level responses.
  • Coordinates input from technical, financial, legal, acquisition, security, policy, and mission stakeholders.
  • Reviews proposed responses for accuracy, consistency, responsiveness, risk, and alignment with established customer positions.
  • Prepares CIO and CISO leadership for Congressional engagements, hearings, briefings, oversight reviews, and senior interagency discussions.
  • Maintains awareness of recurring oversight concerns and identifies underlying strategic, programmatic, or management issues requiring leadership action.
• 7. IT and Cybersecurity Policy
  • Advises the CIO and CISO on development, interpretation, implementation, and modernization of enterprise IT and cybersecurity policy.
  • Assesses the operational and mission impact of proposed policies, standards, directives, and technical requirements.
  • Helps ensure policies establish clear governance, responsibilities, decision authorities, risk-management expectations, and accountability.
  • Identifies outdated, conflicting, duplicative, or unnecessarily restrictive requirements and recommends policy modernization.
  • Supports implementation of applicable federal, Intelligence Community, national security, cybersecurity, privacy, records, acquisition, and technology-management requirements.
  • Promotes policy approaches that are risk-based, technically defensible, operationally executable, and measurable.
• 8. Cybersecurity Strategy and Resilience
  • Advises the CISO and CIO on enterprise cybersecurity strategy, priorities, investments, and major risk decisions.
  • Supports integration of cybersecurity into enterprise architecture, cloud adoption, acquisition, system engineering, modernization, identity management, data protection, and operational planning.
  • Reviews significant cyber initiatives and risks to identify enterprise dependencies, systemic vulnerabilities, resource gaps, and mission consequences.
  • Promotes cybersecurity approaches emphasizing zero trust principles, continuous risk management, resilience, secure-by-design practices, and defense in depth.
  • Helps translate technical cybersecurity issues into clear mission, operational, financial, and enterprise-risk implications for senior leadership.
• 9. Interagency and Intelligence Community Coordination
  • Supports CIO/CISO engagement with Intelligence Community, federal, and national-security partners on enterprise technology and cybersecurity matters.
  • Develops customer positions, decision papers, talking points, and recommendations for cross-IC technology and cybersecurity discussions.
  • Evaluates external initiatives for implications to customer architecture, interoperability, security, investment priorities, policy, and mission operations.
  • Promotes interoperability and appropriate enterprise solutions while protecting customer-specific mission, security, and operational requirements.
• 10. Executive Communications and Decision Support
  • Produces concise, analytically rigorous materials for senior decision-makers, including:
  • Executive briefings
  • Decision memoranda
  • Congressional response packages
  • Budget and investment narratives
  • Technology strategy papers
  • Enterprise risk assessments
  • Policy recommendations
  • Modernization roadmaps
  • Governance materials
  • CIO/CISO talking points
  • Converts highly technical subjects into clear mission, risk, cost, schedule, policy, and decision implications and anticipates executive questions, decision points, alternatives, dependencies, and consequences.

SCOPE OF AUTHORITY

• The Senior Technical Advisor operates with substantial independence and handles complex matters with significant customer-wide implications. The incumbent:
  • Provides recommendations directly to the CIO and CISO.
  • Leads or coordinates cross-functional analysis involving technical, cyber, budget, acquisition, policy, and mission organizations.
  • Exercises influence through technical expertise, strategic analysis, and executive communication rather than direct operational authority.
  • May represent CIO/CISO positions in designated customer and IC governance forums.
  • Handles highly sensitive matters requiring discretion, sound judgment, and understanding of national security environments.

REQUIREMENTS

• Security Clearance: Active TS/SCI with polygraph required. Polygraph type must meet customer requirements.
• Education and Experience: Bachelor's degree in business or a STEM-related field, plus the required years of relevant experience, subject to confirmation of the customer's contractual requirements.
• Extensive experience in enterprise IT, cybersecurity, technology strategy, or senior IT management within complex government, defense, intelligence, or national-security environments.
• Demonstrated ability to advise SES, executive, or equivalent senior leadership on consequential technology and cybersecurity matters.
• Strong understanding of IT budgeting, capital planning, acquisition, portfolio management, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity risk, and technology modernization.
• Experience evaluating large-scale IT investments and translating technical issues into executive decisions.
• Experience developing or implementing enterprise IT and cybersecurity policies.
• Demonstrated ability to assess complex enterprise risks spanning mission, cyber, technology, operational, financial, and organizational considerations.
• Experience developing executive briefings, decision memoranda, Congressional or oversight responses, and senior-level correspondence.
• Strong knowledge of federal and national-security IT and cybersecurity governance.
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills, particularly the ability to communicate complex issues concisely to nontechnical executives.
• Ability to work effectively across organizational boundaries and reconcile competing mission, technical, security, resource, and policy priorities.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Strong working knowledge of relevant frameworks and authorities, including:
  • FISMA
  • NIST Risk Management Framework
  • NIST SP 800-53
  • NIST Cybersecurity Framework
  • Zero Trust Architecture
  • Federal IT acquisition and capital planning
  • Enterprise architecture
  • Supply-chain risk management
  • Continuous monitoring
  • Cloud security
  • Identity, credential, and access management
  • Data protection and governance
  • Artificial intelligence governance and cybersecurity
  • Applicable Intelligence Community directives, policies, standards, and security requirements

CORE COMPETENCIES

• Strategic Leadership: Connects technology and cybersecurity decisions to customer mission objectives and long-range priorities.
• Executive Judgment: Distinguishes issues requiring senior leadership attention from matters that can be resolved operationally.
• Enterprise Perspective: Evaluates decisions across mission, technology, cyber, architecture, budget, acquisition, workforce, and policy boundaries.
• Risk-Based Decision Support: Frames technical issues around mission impact, likelihood, consequence, alternatives, and residual risk.
• Financial Acumen: Understands the relationship among strategy, requirements, appropriations, acquisition, investment decisions, and program execution.
• Technical Credibility: Engages effectively with architects, engineers, cybersecurity professionals, program managers, acquisition officials, and mission users.
• Policy Expertise: Converts statutory, regulatory, IC, and customer requirements into practical enterprise policy and governance.
• Executive Communication: Converts complexity into concise, decision-oriented recommendations suitable for CIO, CISO, customer leadership, Congressional, and oversight audiences.
• Influence Without Direct Authority: Builds consensus and drives enterprise outcomes across organizational boundaries.

POSITION IMPACT 

The Senior Technical Advisor directly influences the customer's ability to prioritize technology investments, manage enterprise cyber and IT risk, modernize legacy capabilities, respond effectively to external oversight, strengthen enterprise governance, and align cybersecurity with mission execution.

Success in the role is reflected not simply in the production of strategies or policies, but in the quality and speed of executive decisions, stronger alignment between mission priorities and IT resources, reduction of unmanaged enterprise risk, measurable modernization progress, and the CIO/CISO's ability to articulate and defend the customer's technology posture to senior leadership and Congressional and oversight stakeholders.