Cybersecurity Visionary Leader

Director of SOC: Cybersecurity Leadership Position Job Description

The Director of SOC is responsible for the strategic vision, engineering, and operational effectiveness of the Security Operations Center (SOC). This individual will design, implement, and continuously improve the technological tools, processes, and team capabilities that enable rapid detection, analysis, containment, and remediation of cyber threats.

Key Responsibilities:
• Strategic Leadership: Develop and communicate a clear vision for SOC engineering and incident response in alignment with the organization's security objectives and risk tolerance. Establish and maintain the SOC's engineering roadmap, ensuring ongoing innovation and adaptation to evolving threats and technologies. Advocate for resources, budget, and executive support necessary to build a world-class SOC engineering and response capability.
• Team Management and Development: Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of SOC engineers, analysts, and responders. Recruit, train, and retain top security talent. Foster a collaborative, growth-oriented environment that values continuous learning and operational excellence.
• SOC Engineering and Technology Enablement: Oversee the architecture, deployment, integration, and maintenance of SOC technologies, including SIEM, SOAR, EDR, and threat intelligence platforms. Ensure systems are optimized for coverage, speed, accuracy, and scalability across on-premises and cloud environments. Drive the adoption of automation, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics to enhance detection and response capabilities. Manage vendor relationships, tool selection, and contract negotiations to ensure the SOC leverages the best technologies for the organization's needs.
• Incident Detection and Response: Oversee 24/7 monitoring, triage, and analysis of security events to identify and remediate threats promptly. Direct the incident response process from detection through containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident review. Develop, test, and maintain incident response plans and playbooks for a wide range of threat scenarios, including ransomware, phishing, insider threats, and data breaches. Coordinate with cross-functional teams, such as IT, Legal, Compliance, and Communications, during incident response activities.
• Threat Intelligence and Hunting: Work with First Advantage's Threat Intelligence team to integrate external and internal threat intelligence sources to proactively identify emerging risks and vulnerabilities. Support proactive threat hunting initiatives to uncover hidden threats and reduce dwell time. Ensure threat intelligence is actionable, timely, and integrated into detection and response processes.

Requirements:
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Engineering, or related field; Master's degree preferred. Additional experience in lieu of a degree will be considered.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity, with at least 5 years in a leadership role over an engineering or development technology team.
• Expertise in security monitoring, incident response, threat intelligence, and SOC engineering across diverse technology environments. Strong knowledge of SOC technologies (SIEM, SOAR, EDR, IDS/IPS, firewalls, cloud security tools) and best practices.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills. Outstanding written and verbal communication abilities, with the capacity to convey complex security issues to technical and non-technical audiences. Relevant industry certifications such as CISSP, CISM, GIAC, GCIA, GCIH, or equivalent are strongly preferred. Experience with regulatory compliance frameworks and audit processes.

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