Cybersecurity Research Assistant

Axle is seeking a Cybersecurity Research Assistant to join our vibrant team supporting rare disease research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This is a Remote position within the United States. 

Overview 

Axle supports AI research systems that run on on-premises Kubernetes clusters and shared high-performance computing infrastructure. This role implements and monitors defined security controls across that environment, and helps develop AI tooling that assists with developing and maintaining cybersecurity controls. 

This is a hands-on early-career role for someone with a systems or IT background who wants to move into security engineering. You would be jointly supervised by our AI technical lead and by a lead systems administrator, giving you a direct line into both the security engineering side and the day-to-day operation of the infrastructure you are securing. We are looking for a self-motivated person who wants to build a career in cybersecurity, gaining hands-on experience and earning the certifications that go with it. Axle will sponsor the right candidate for those certifications and provides working hours to study for them. 

Responsibilities 

• Implement assigned security controls as configuration changes across our Kubernetes, Linux, database, and model-serving environments, working from the control catalog and an assigned task list. 

• Build out and operate monitoring and detection coverage, including metrics collection, dashboards, log aggregation, and alert routing. 

• Run vulnerability scanning across container images, hosts, and application dependencies on a set schedule, track findings to closure, and keep the plan of action and milestones current. 

• Write and maintain the automation that applies hardening baselines and checks them for drift, using Ansible and Python. 

• Contribute to secrets management, network policy, and role-based access control work across the cluster environments. 

• Build the deterministic collectors that gather control evidence, including cluster API queries, policy engine reports, scan output, access control dumps, and database configuration exports, normalized into a common format and stored with timestamps. 

• Help build the internal AI tooling that assists with this work, including retrieval over the control catalog and system documentation, drafting from collected evidence, and triaging scanner output into ranked findings for human review. 

• Keep security documentation in agreement with the deployed configuration, and raise discrepancies promptly through your supervisors. 

• Test what you build. Restore a backup and confirm it works, break a policy on purpose and confirm the alert fires, and verify that a control you implemented does what the catalog says it does. 

• Document what you did in enough detail that an assessor can follow it a year from now. 

• Prepare material for security reviews and continuous monitoring reports, working with your supervisors on anything that goes to an assessor or an authorizing official. 

Must Have 

• One to three years of professional experience in IT, systems administration, help desk, network operations, or a comparable hands-on technical role. 

• Comfort on the Linux command line. You can read a log, trace a permissions problem, and work out what a service is doing. 

• Scripting ability in Bash and Python. You do not need to be a software engineer, but you should have automated something real and be able to walk us through it. 

• Demonstrated interest in security. Coursework, a home lab, capture the flag competitions, a Security+ in progress, a personal project, or security work inside a broader IT role all count. 

• Careful, methodical work habits. Much of this job is doing a procedure correctly, recording what happened, and noticing when the result does not match what was expected. 

• Willingness to ask questions early and to say plainly when you do not know something. 

• Ability to work independently on assigned tasks and to give regular updates on what is planned, in progress, and finished. 

• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust Security clearance. 

Requirements 

• Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or a related field. We will consider equivalent professional experience or a completed technical certification program in place of a degree. 

• Working knowledge of Linux system administration, ideally on RHEL based systems such as Rocky Linux, and on Ubuntu. 

• Basic understanding of networking, including TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, firewalls, and how a request travels from a browser to a service. 

• Basic familiarity with containers, and real interest in learning Kubernetes. We will teach it. You should want to learn it. 

• Familiarity with version control and comfort working in a shared Git repository. 

• Ability to follow a written procedure precisely, and to notice when the procedure itself is wrong. 

• Clear written communication. A large part of this role is documenting what was done and why. 

• Interest in learning how federal security authorization actually works, including NIST security controls, continuous monitoring, and how evidence is assembled and reviewed. 

Desired Skills & Experience 

• CompTIA Security+, Network+, or Linux+, a Kubernetes certification, or a cloud certification. 

• Coursework or a degree concentration in cybersecurity or information assurance. 

• Any exposure to NIST security standards, security frameworks, or compliance work, including academic exposure. 

• A home lab, capture the flag participation, open-source contributions, or a personal project you can walk us through. 

• Experience with Ansible, Terraform, or another configuration management tool. 

• Any experience with Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic, or another monitoring or logging platform. 

• Curiosity about large language models and about building tools with them. Prior AI experience is not expected. You would learn that here. 

• Prior work at NIH or another federal agency, or familiarity with federal IT environments. 

Training and Certification 

This is a training role and we mean it literally. You would work alongside experienced engineers on a real federal authorization effort, with two supervisors invested in bringing you up to speed. Axle pays for certification exams and study materials, and this role includes scheduled working hours for study rather than expecting it on your own time. 

The expected path is CompTIA Security+ first, then a Linux or Kubernetes credential such as RHCSA or the Certified Kubernetes Administrator, then Kubernetes security through the Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist. Candidates who want to go further toward the authorization side can pursue CGRC. We will build the specific plan with you based on what you already have. 

What we need from you is the willingness to do careful work and to build a real skill set over the next two years, rather than to arrive with it.