Consulting Associate/Recovery Services (Forensic Services practice)

Charles River Associates•Chicago, TX

12h•Hybrid

About The Position

CRA’s Forensic Services practice supports companies’ commitment to integrity by assisting them and their counsel in independently responding to allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and non-compliance. We are noted for deploying cross-trained teams of forensic professionals to assist our clients in gaining deeper insights and greater value more quickly. We provide accounting and forensic services as well as cybercrime investigation services. The Consulting Associate is a hands-on technical responder and forensic analyst who executes the core workstreams of incident response and recovery engagements. You will lead forensic collection and analysis, drive containment and eradication actions in hybrid Microsoft environments, and rebuild enterprise identity and infrastructure under time pressure. This role is for a practitioner who is equally comfortable pulling disk images from a compromised ESXi host at 2 AM and walking a general counsel through the findings the next morning.

Requirements

3-5 years of hands-on experience in incident response, digital forensics, or a closely related security engineering role
Demonstrated experience responding to ransomware, BEC, or intrusion matters in enterprise environments
Deep working knowledge of Active Directory and Entra ID, including attack paths (Kerberos abuse, shadow credentials, ADCS misconfigurations) and hardening controls
Proficiency with at least one enterprise EDR platform and its response tooling
Strong scripting ability in PowerShell; Python a plus
Excellent written communication; able to produce report-quality prose without heavy editing
Ability to operate independently under incident conditions and manage competing priorities across concurrent matters

Nice To Haves

Industry certifications such as GCFA, GCIH, GNFA, GCFE, EnCE, CISSP, or equivalent
Experience with virtualization forensics (VMware vSAN, iSCSI, datastore-level acquisition) and backup platform recovery
Familiarity with Google Workspace forensics and administrative tooling
Experience working under legal privilege with outside counsel and cyber insurance carriers
Exposure to OT/ICS environments or regulated industries (healthcare, financial services)

Responsibilities

Execute digital forensic collection and analysis across Windows, Linux, virtualized (VMware, Hyper-V), and cloud (Azure, M365, Google Workspace) environments
Perform endpoint and identity containment using EDR platforms (CrowdStrike Falcon or equivalent), including real-time response, custom detection logic, and telemetry analysis
Lead technical recovery workstreams in ransomware matters: domain controller rebuild and validation, tiered credential resets, hypervisor and backup restoration, and host checkout against defined gate criteria
Investigate business email compromise and wire fraud matters, including mail flow reconstruction, tenant log analysis, OAuth and enterprise application audits, and attacker infrastructure attribution
Analyze and remediate hybrid identity environments: Active Directory, Entra ID, Entra Connect, Conditional Access, and privileged access configurations
Develop and maintain PowerShell, Graph SDK, and Python tooling for collection, containment, and recovery automation
Produce clear, defensible written work product: forensic reports, investigation timelines, containment playbooks, and client status communications
Support engagement scoping by contributing technical level-of-effort estimates grounded in environment evidence
Interface directly with client IT teams, counsel, and carrier representatives during active matters