Mid-Level Exercise Planner

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Leidos is seeking a Mid-Level Exercise Planner to be a part of an exercise support team providing HSEEP exercise planning and design, development, conduct, and evaluation support for CISA’s National Cybersecurity Exercise Program (NCEP), including supporting all aspects of exercise coordination, documentation, participant support, and basic reporting activities. This role supports both day-to-day program operations and execution of exercise events by maintaining organized materials, tracking actions, and supporting tools used to register, track, and analyze participants and findings.

If this sounds like the kind of environment where you can thrive, keep reading!

Leidos’ Homeland Sector’s Airports, Borders, and Security (ABS) business area delivers air travel modernization, border protection, and critical infrastructure security solutions that help build a safer, more resilient homeland. Operating globally across aviation security, passenger screening, cybersecurity, and border and port security, ABS integrates next-generation technologies—including AI-driven analytics, advanced threat detection, and command-and-control platforms—to secure the movement of people and goods worldwide by improving situational awareness, accelerating decisions, and strengthening operational outcomes for customers.

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Mid-Level Exercise Planner

Primary Responsibilities Include:

• Support and lead aspects of exercise design, development, conduct, and evaluation on a team working concurrently on multiple exercises across the country.

• Communicate and coordinate regularly across exercise support team, with Senior Exercise Planners, Exercise Leads, and with exercise stakeholders.

• Participate in meetings with Senior Exercise Planners and Regional Exercise Leads regularly to ensure timely production of materials and exercise execution.

• Support and participate in planning meetings (as appropriate), such as C&O, IP, MPM, MSEL Meeting, and FPM, and in developing all supporting documentation, including agendas, presentations, and notes/meeting minutes.

• Support the development of core exercise documentation and artifacts (e.g., CONOPS, EXPLAN, SITMAN, MSEL, COSIN, evaluation forms, invitations/sign-in sheets).

• Support end-to-end exercise execution: concept and scope, execution support, evaluation approach, and post-exercise reporting (AAR and assigned reports).

• Support creation and maintenance of exercise documentation packages (e.g., invitations, sign-in sheets, meeting notes, and other administrative documents).

• Support participant registration and tracking activities using technical tools provided/used by the program.

• Support collection and organization of findings, recommendations, and lessons learned for post-exercise products.

• Report regularly to Exercise Leads and across exercise support team according to communications plan.

• Attend and participate in each exercise within assigned region, as required.

• Support development of new CISA Tabletop Exercise Packages (CTEPs) and maintenance of the CTEP scenario library.

• Support internal training activities to improve facilitation and planning skills across NCEP staff.

• Support program operations tasks as directed (e.g., maintaining an exercise calendar, assisting with content organization on CISA.gov/other platforms, supporting all-hands coordination).

• Ability to work on Eastern time zone hours; ability to be on camera on Microsoft Teams for meetings where required.

Required Experience, Skills, and Education:

• Ability to obtain DHS Suitability / CISA EOD.

• 5+ years experience in HSEEP exercise design, development, conduct, and evaluation.

• Experience coordinating with multiple stakeholders across technical, operational, government, and private-sector environments.

• Ability to analyze complex cyber scenarios and identify technical, operational, procedural, communications, and information-sharing gaps.

• FEMA HSEEP Certification or ability to achieve HSEEP certification within 30 days of contract start.

• Strong writing skills to develop polished exercise materials and documents (such as EXPLANs, SITMANs, MSELs, and controller/observer instructions) and post-exercise products (including AAR drafting support).

• Demonstrated ability to manage time, meet deadlines and milestones.

Preferred Experience, Skills, and Education:

• Experience with cybersecurity operations, cyber threat analysis, incident response, vulnerability management, cyber risk management, or cyber exercise planning.

• FEMA Master Exercise Practitioner (MEP)

• Experience supporting cybersecurity-focused scenarios and stakeholder engagement across government and private sector partners.

• Cybersecurity Certifications

  • CISSP

  • CEH

  • GIAC

• Experience contributing to AAR development and communicating findings to technical and non-technical audiences.

Clearance Required:

• none

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.