Principal, Cybersecurity Incident Responder - Remote
About The Position
The Principal Cybersecurity Incident Responder is a senior technical cybersecurity leader who leads the response to significant and complex cybersecurity incidents. The role establishes technical priorities, drives investigations, and guides incidents through containment, eradication, and recovery. It requires broad cybersecurity expertise and deep, hands-on incident response experience to make timely, risk-based decisions in complex and rapidly evolving situations. During significant incidents, the responder serves as the Technical Response Lead and partners with Investigations, Detection Engineering, Security Engineering, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Threat Hunting, Forensics, Security Operations, and other specialists. Outside active incidents, the role strengthens response readiness by improving playbooks, exercises, telemetry, tooling, automation, and lessons-learned processes, including identifying responsible opportunities to leverage AI. The position is remote, with preference for candidates in Eastern or Central time zones to support collaboration during core business hours. Travel is 20%.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Security, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
- At least 8 years of relevant cybersecurity experience across incident response, digital forensics, threat hunting, security operations, security engineering, or related disciplines.
Nice To Haves
- Relevant industry certifications in incident response, digital forensics, security operations, cloud security, or related cybersecurity disciplines.
- CISSP certification.
- GCIH certification.
- Other relevant incident response certification, such as ECIH or OSIR.
- Digital forensics certification, such as GCFA, GCFE, or CHFI.
- CISM certification.
- GSOC certification.
- Demonstrated experience leading technical responses to significant or complex cybersecurity incidents involving multiple technical teams and stakeholders.
- Significant hands-on experience investigating and responding to sophisticated cyberattacks.
- Strong understanding of modern attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures and the ability to apply that knowledge during active incidents.
- Broad technical knowledge of endpoint, identity, network, cloud, email, and enterprise security technologies, including investigation telemetry across these environments.
- Demonstrated ability to evaluate evidence, test hypotheses, identify investigative gaps, and make sound decisions with incomplete or rapidly changing information.
- Experience developing or improving incident response playbooks, procedures, exercises, or operational capabilities.
- Ability to communicate complex technical situations clearly and concisely to technical responders, cybersecurity leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to coordinate and influence cross-functional technical teams without direct authority and operate effectively in a high-pressure, global environment.
Responsibilities
- Lead the technical response to significant and complex cybersecurity incidents from initial investigation through containment, eradication, and recovery.
- Establish technical priorities, maintain momentum, and make timely, risk-based decisions when information is incomplete, conflicting, or rapidly changing.
- Partner with Investigations, Detection Engineering, Security Engineering, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Threat Hunting, Forensics, Security Operations, and other teams to determine incident scope and coordinate response actions.
- Apply knowledge of attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures to incidents involving identity compromise, ransomware, malware, cloud compromise, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and other advanced threats.
- Evaluate investigative findings, identify critical gaps, test hypotheses, and translate evidence into effective containment, eradication, and recovery strategies.
- Balance rapid containment with business impact, operational continuity, evidence preservation, and the need to understand incident scope.
- Develop and improve incident response playbooks, procedures, and technical capabilities based on incidents, exercises, emerging threats, and lessons learned.
- Design and facilitate technical tabletop exercises and simulations to validate response capabilities and identify improvement opportunities.
- Identify telemetry, tooling, access, and visibility gaps and partner with technical teams to strengthen detection and response capabilities.
- Use AI, automation, and orchestration where appropriate to accelerate investigation and response while maintaining appropriate human oversight.
- Lead technical contributions to post-incident reviews and drive improvements across telemetry, detections, tooling, automation, procedures, and training.
- Serve as a senior technical resource and mentor, strengthening incident response capabilities and decision-making across the cybersecurity organization.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
