Cyber Assistant Jobs in Illinois (NOW HIRING)

Role: Cyber Recovery Engineer
Location: Chicago, IL - 3 days onsite a week
Duration: 12 Months
Project Overview / Contractor's Role:
The Cyber Recovery Engineer is an entry-to-mid-level technical role supporting the design, operation, and testing of the organization's cyber recovery program within a regulated financial services environment. You will work alongside senior engineers and program leads to build hands-on proficiency in isolated recovery environments (IRE), clean room operations, backup platform management, and regulatory documentation.
This role is intentionally structured to develop the next generation of cyber recovery practitioners. You bring foundational infrastructure or security skills, exposure to a financial institution or highly regulated environment, and a genuine interest in the intersection of resilience engineering and regulatory compliance. You will be expected to grow into independent ownership of recovery workstreams within 12-18 months.
Experience Level: Senior
Required Qualifications (Must Have):
> 7-10 years of experience in infrastructure engineering, IT operations, or a security-adjacent technical role.
> Experience at a financial institution (bank, broker-dealer, asset manager, insurance firm, or equivalent regulated entity), OR in a similarly regulated environment (healthcare, utilities, government).
> Exposure to disaster recovery or backup operations - including participating in DR tests, managing backup jobs, or executing restore procedures.
> Familiarity with at least one enterprise backup or replication platform: Cohesity, Rubrik, Veeam, Zerto, Commvault, or NetBackup.
> Basic scripting ability in Python, Bash, or PowerShell; comfort running and modifying existing scripts.
> Understanding of core networking concepts (VLANs, firewall rules, DNS, routing) relevant to isolated environment configuration.
> Strong documentation habits; ability to write clear, accurate technical procedures and test records.
> Awareness of regulatory frameworks such as FFIEC, NIST CSF, or NYDFS as they apply to technology and resilience.
Preferred Qualifications (Nice to Have):
Direct participation in an IRE or clean room recovery exercise, even in a supporting capacity.
Exposure to regulatory examinations or audit walkthroughs in a technology or cybersecurity context.
Familiarity with IaC tooling: Terraform, Ansible, or equivalent configuration management platforms.
Coursework or self-study in cybersecurity, resilience engineering, or cloud infrastructure.
Certifications (in progress or completed): CompTIA Security+, CySA+, AWS/Azure fundamentals, or vendor backup platform training.
Experience with ticketing, change management, and ITSM workflows (ServiceNow or equivalent).
Exposure to ransomware response or cyber incident response tabletop exercises.
Tasks & Responsibilities:
Isolated & Clean Room Recovery Support
- Assist in maintaining and operating the Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) and clean room infrastructure under senior engineer guidance.
- Execute assigned steps in recovery runbooks during tabletop exercises, simulation drills, and full recovery tests.
- Document recovery test procedures, results, and deviations; flag anomalies to senior team members for triage.
- Support forensic validation tasks within the IRE, including integrity checks and configuration comparisons prior to production re-entry.
- Learn and apply clean room protocols, including network isolation verification and identity access controls during recovery scenarios.
Backup Platform Operations
- Perform day-to-day operational tasks across enterprise backup and replication platforms (e.g., Cohesity, Rubrik, Veeam, Zerto, or equivalent).
- Monitor backup job health, investigate failures, and escalate persistent issues with documented findings.
- Assist in configuring and validating backup policies, retention schedules, and replication targets for critical systems.
- Support testing of restore procedures for servers, databases, and applications; record RTO/RPO outcomes against targets.
Regulatory Documentation & Audit Support
- Assist in preparing evidence packages, control narratives, and test result documentation for regulatory examinations and internal audits.
- Maintain organized records of recovery test logs, exercise outcomes, and remediation tracking in line with regulatory standards (FFIEC, NIST CSF, NYDFS).
- Participate in walkthroughs and working sessions with regulators or internal audit teams alongside senior engineers; develop familiarity with examination processes.
- Support mapping of regulatory guidance to recovery engineering controls under direction of senior staff.
Recovery Engineering & Automation
- Execute scripted recovery automation tasks (Python, Bash, PowerShell) and assist in maintaining IaC-driven recovery environment configurations (Terraform, Ansible).
- Contribute to runbook updates and playbook maintenance as procedures evolve.
- Participate in post-exercise after action reviews (AARs); contribute observations and help track findings to closure.
- Collaborate with infrastructure, application, and database teams to understand system dependencies relevant to recovery sequencing.