Capabilities Development Specialist

Department of Defense National Security Agency/Central Security Service (15 current openings) Fort Meade, Maryland Full-time Security Clearance: Top Secret
Application Deadline:
2026-08-23
Posted:
2026-08-10

About 2 weeks left

Salary: $105,262 – $197,200 per year (GG-11/15)

Salary context

Based on 49 annual-salary jobs in the same occupational series. This role pays above most similar positions.

Job Details

Qualifications & Requirements

FULL PERFORMANCE Entry is with a Bachelor's degree plus 3 years of relevant experience or a Master's degree plus 1 year of relevant experience or a Doctoral degree and no experience. An Associate's degree plus 5 years of relevant experience may be considered for individuals with in-depth experience that is clearly related to the position. SENIOR Entry is with a Bachelor's degree plus 6 years of relevant experience or a Master's degree plus 4 years of relevant experience or a Doctoral degree plus 2 years of relevant experience. An Associate's degree plus 8 years of relevant experience may be considered for individuals with in-depth experience that is clearly related to the position. EXPERT Entry is with a Bachelor's degree plus 9 years of relevant experience or a Master's degree plus 7 years of relevant experience or a Doctoral degree plus 5 years of relevant experience. An Associate's degree plus 11 years of relevant experience may be considered for individuals with in-depth experience that is clearly related to the position.

Position Overview

If you are passionate about using cutting-edge technology and developing groundbreaking solutions for seemingly unsolvable problems, NSA needs your expertise. We're looking for computer science or computer/electrical engineering professionals with strong software or hardware design, development, testing or reverse engineering skills to join our team as a Capabilities Development Specialist (CDS).

Duties

  • As a CDS, you will develop custom high-priority offensive and defensive capabilities targeting the hardest-to-reach adversarial networks in the world. You will apply and grow your expertise to create new ways to get critical information to national decision makers as part of the world's most advanced team of computer science and engineering professionals. Responsibilities may include: - Developing exploitation capabilities and analytics to enable foreign target network collection - Designing hardware components and systems to further signals intelligence missions - Analyzing sophisticated malware Competencies If you have interests, skills, or experience in one or more of the following areas, we'd like to hear from you: - Software Specialties: Strong software development skills (C, C++, Assembly, ARM); software RE/interactive debugging tools); software application vulnerability analysis and exploitation; operating system internals; mobile platform development and analysis; algorithmic analysis; prototyping. - Malware Reverse Engineering: Advanced malware analysis/reverse engineering of specialized malware/complex files. - Hardware Specialties: Hardware RE, design, development, or testing and debugging. **Please upload a copy of your transcripts from all schools attended, prior to applying for this position. Unofficial transcripts are fine at this stage. The minimum qualifications for this position may require a degree that demonstrates a concentration of Computer Science (CS) courses in foundational CS areas.**