Data Security Specialist Role

About OPEN Data Jobs

OPEN Data Jobs (ODJ) is built to craft data careers. We connect high-potential data, AI, and software professionals with meaningful work on the cutting edge of the federal sector, and our aim reaches beyond any single opening: to help you understand your strengths, find the right role, and grow throughout your career.

ODJ is organized around Roles and Openings. A Role is a durable career type, such as Data Engineer or AI Engineer: it describes the work, the skills that count, and where the path can lead. An Opening is a specific position hiring right now, with a level, a location, and an application. Roles help you see where you fit; from there, there is more than one way to move.

Today, you can apply to any Opening that fits you through our secure application system. You can also register for a Role to express interest in that broader category of work. A Role registration is not an application to every future Opening.

The work

Data Security Specialists protect information where it is stored, processed, shared, and accessed. They design and maintain the data-facing controls that let organizations use valuable information while applying least privilege, strong authentication, encryption, classification, monitoring, and accountable access.

The role combines security architecture with operational discipline. Specialists work with data owners, platform teams, and governance practitioners to translate risk and control objectives into access policies, key-management practices, entitlement reviews, and auditable data flows. They focus on the protection of data itself, distinct from the infrastructure platform or software-delivery pipeline.

What you'll build

· Role-based and attribute-based access patterns for data platforms and services.

· Data-classification standards and protective handling patterns tied to access and monitoring.

· Encryption, key-management, tokenization, or masking implementations appropriate to the data use case.

· Entitlement-review and audit-trail processes that make access decisions visible and accountable.

· Data protection controls for exchange, storage, analytics, and artificial intelligence system inputs or outputs when applicable.

Who you are

You make security usable without making it optional. You can distinguish a control objective from a particular tool and work with teams to choose enforcement that fits the data, system architecture, and mission.

You are precise about identity, authorization, classification, and evidence. You recognize that data protection depends on clear owners and well-defined access decisions, not only on perimeter defenses.

What you bring

• · Experience with data access governance, authorization models, and entitlement review.
• · Working knowledge of encryption, key management, tokenization, masking, or similar data-protection controls.
• · Experience with data classification, audit logging, monitoring, and security incident support.
• · Knowledge of zero trust principles and how they inform granular data and service access.
• · Ability to apply National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-53 security-control concepts to data platforms, exchanges, and analytical workloads.
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Requirements

• Openings may specify a data platform, cloud service, security toolset, classification regime, or authorization context. Systems handling artificial intelligence workloads may also require experience protecting training data, retrieval sources, model inputs, outputs, and service identities.
• Some roles may emphasize design and engineering, while others may emphasize control operations, assessment support, or incident response. Data Security Specialists should coordinate with governance teams on policies and ownership, while retaining responsibility for technical data-protection implementation.