Crypto Security Specialist

Role Purpose

The role exists to apply High Grade cryptography and key management expertise to customer mission challenges through research, advice, consultancy or engineering and working with colleagues from different professional disciplines and organisations.

Key Accountabilities

1. Develop small or large proposals as part of a team in response to requests from customers and consortium partners in crypto security domain
2. Lead technical work to identify and derive security requirements, develop/analyse innovative solutions, and understand/shape both the “big picture” and technical details in crypto security domain
3. Deliver high quality analysis, designs, reports, and presentations that focus on customer problems and solutions in cryptosecurity domain and develop positive customer and stakeholder relationships

Key Capabilities/Knowledge

• Understand cyber security, its significance, concepts, threats, vulnerabilities and assurance. 
• Awareness of digital technology trends and a desire to stay up to date with the latest threats and solutions. 
• Able to apply adversarial mind-set. How to attack and break the security of systems.
• Able to advise on how to employ High grade crypto and key management to achieve security outcome in accordance with accepted national good practice (recognised expert consensus)
• Able to take high-level security objectives and break these down into the security requirements for a relatively complex crypto system in a mission context.
• Able to propose / design new approaches to meet security requirements for a crypto system in a mission context
• Able to propose system and engineering trades with reasoning given contradictory security and mission objectives in a system. 
• Able to express a security trade based on topics such as overall system performance, legal requirements, time and budget. 
• Understand cryptographic algorithms, what functions they do and do not deliver and how they fit together to enable secure protocols. 
• Analyse complex communication and key management protocols, understand their operation, support engineers implementing these standards and communicate with specification authors.
• Able to apply technical skills at an engineering level to IT and crypto equipment. May include programming or automation scripts within a high level scope
• Knowledge of crypto and key management R&D or product design for a standards regulated market (e.g. UK Government CAPS, FIPS, PCI DSSS)
• Demonstrate rigor in performing equipment interoperability and conformance experiments and recording results. Suitable for customers to make acceptance decisions.
• Awareness of security architectures and security technology (hardware, software)
• Applying critical thinking to analyse and solve problems as they arise
• Able to lead small teams within QinetiQ
• Technical leadership (minimum LCM1)Able to engage and communicate effectively with stakeholders including customers
• Able to work independently seeking guidance on own initiative for unusual or complex situation

Experience & Qualifications

Essential

• Degree level education or equivalent
• Minimum of 3 years of experience working with crypto and key management technology in an academic research or industrial environment or a combination
• UK Security SC or DV clearance or willingness to obtain one.
• QinetiQ Technical Leadership requirements (minimum LCM1)

Desirable

• Crypto focused MSc or PhD for direct entry
• Experience of engineering design and implementation processes
• Experience of digital communications technology (e.g. radio,  coding, protocols, internet technology)
• Experience of crypto and key management R&D or product design for a standards regulated market (e.g. UK Government CAPS, FIPS, PCI DSSS)