This role is intended for experienced cybersecurity practitioners to participate in a skills assessment pilot aligned to the Cyber Defense Analyst. The engagement supports assessment validation and standard-setting and is not used for hiring, ranking, or performance evaluation.
The Contract SME will complete a practitioner-level assessment and a brief survey only. This role does not involve teaching, instructional design, content creation, consulting, or ongoing advisory work.
Scope of Work
- Complete a practitioner-level skills assessment
- Complete a short post-assessment survey
- No meetings, facilitation, reviews, or follow-up work
This is a finite, transactional engagement.
Time Commitment
- Estimated assessment length: ~120 items
- Estimated completion time: Approximately 1 hour
- Assessment window: Must be completed within a defined access period (typically 5 business days once access is granted)
- Once started, the assessment must be completed within 24 hours
Candidates must be current practitioners with hands-on experience analyzing and responding to cybersecurity events. Familiarity should align with one or more of the following:
- Monitoring and analyzing data from cyber defense tools (e.g., IDS/IPS, firewalls, SIEMs, network logs)
- Identifying indicators of compromise and suspicious activity
- Investigating alerts to determine threat scope and impact
- Supporting threat mitigation and containment activities
- Understanding network fundamentals, attack techniques, and adversary behaviors
- Working within security operations or cyber defense teams
Minimum Performance Expectation
- Participants must score above 50% on the assessment
- This threshold exists only to confirm practitioner-level participation
- Results are not used for hiring, ranking, or performance evaluation
Ideal Candidate Profile
- Active cyber defense or SOC practitioner
- Experience analyzing real-world security events and alerts
- Comfortable making judgments under uncertainty
- Reliable and able to complete work within a short, defined window
Deliverables
- One completed skills assessment
- One completed post-assessment survey
Compensation
- Flat-fee contract payment
- Paid upon successful completion of the assessment and survey