Security Architect - Consultant

Novalink Solutions LLC•West Columbia, SC

2d•Remote

About The Position

This consultant position serves as a SIEM Engineer within the Department of Administration’s Division of Information Security. The role supports a large enterprise security team and a 24x7 Security Operations Center serving multiple state agencies. Its primary focus is engineering, administering, optimizing, and supporting Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM and Cortex XDR in large-scale, multi-tenant environments. It also provides secondary support for Cribl data modeling and security log pipelines. The role covers multi-tenant onboarding and configuration, access controls and data separation, integrations, dashboards, reporting, detection engineering, automation, incident response, threat hunting, and operational support. The consultant also contributes to strategic planning, solution design, implementation, troubleshooting, performance optimization, and continuous improvement of secure systems and services. Responsibilities include supporting SOC analysts, maintaining operational documentation and response workflows, monitoring service and detection metrics, and ensuring resilience and controlled change processes. The position is 100% remote and participates in a monthly on-call rotation supporting the 24x7 SOC. After-hours maintenance, incident escalation support, operational handoffs, and other after-hours work may be required as needed. Applicants must pass a full credit check and criminal background check during initial hiring. After onboarding, the contractor must obtain and retain annual CJIS certification.

Requirements

Hands-on experience designing, implementing, administering, and operationally supporting Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM and Cortex XDR.
Experience engineering and supporting SIEM capabilities in multi-tenant environments and 24x7 Security Operations Center operations.
Experience developing and tuning detections, correlation rules, analytics, threat-hunting queries, dashboards, reporting, and alert suppression logic.
Strong experience creating and managing complex playbooks.
Experience with Cribl data modeling, log pipeline design, parsing, normalization, enrichment, routing, and ingestion.
Experience developing automation, integrations, playbooks, and response workflows using scripting languages such as Python and Bash.
Experience onboarding and troubleshooting telemetry from cloud, endpoint, network, identity, SaaS, Linux, Windows, and custom application sources.
Strong understanding of enterprise security architecture, incident response, networking, access control, secure system design, and industry-standard cybersecurity frameworks.
Experience supporting Tier 1 through Tier 3 SOC analysts, threat hunting, incident response, and 24x7 operational handoffs.
Familiarity with industry-standard security and compliance frameworks and experience developing playbooks, runbooks, procedures, and technical documentation.
Bachelor’s degree in an information technology or information security-related field, or eight years of relevant work experience in lieu of education.
Five or more years of experience supporting large IT environments and/or system deployments.
Must pass a full credit check and criminal background check during the initial hiring process.
Must obtain and retain annual CJIS certification after onboarding.

Nice To Haves

CISSP, Security+, or GIAC certification.
Palo Alto Cortex, Cribl, or other relevant SIEM/security platform certification.

Responsibilities

Plan, design, deploy, administer, optimize, troubleshoot, and provide operational support for enterprise SIEM and XDR capabilities, particularly Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM and Cortex XDR.
Support multi-tenant agency onboarding, tenant-specific configuration, role-based access, data segregation, dashboards, and reporting.
Develop and tune detection content, correlation rules, analytics, threat-hunting queries, watchlists, suppression logic, and false-positive reduction measures.
Plan, design, deploy, and support Cribl-based log management and security data pipelines, including data modeling, routing, parsing, normalization, enrichment, filtering, replay, and ingestion.
Onboard and monitor cloud, endpoint, network, identity, SaaS, and custom application telemetry; troubleshoot telemetry sources including Linux and Windows systems.
Optimize log volume, retention, performance, and cost while maintaining security and compliance requirements.
Integrate security platforms with ticketing, case management, notification, identity, threat intelligence, and other enterprise systems as needed.
Develop, test, deploy, and maintain automated response workflows and playbooks for enrichment, triage, containment, escalation, notifications, case management, and incident response.
Create and maintain runbooks, standard operating procedures, escalation matrices, troubleshooting guides, architecture diagrams, data-flow documentation, use-case catalogs, and analyst knowledge articles.
Support Tier 1 through Tier 3 SOC analysts and incident responders through troubleshooting, detection tuning, threat hunting, technical escalation, knowledge transfer, and shift handoffs.
Monitor and report ingestion health, platform availability, alert volumes, detection coverage, false positives, service levels, mean time to detect, mean time to respond, and tenant-specific operational metrics.
Ensure high availability, resilience, backup, recovery, lifecycle management, and controlled change processes for SIEM, XDR, and supporting log pipeline services.
Collaborate with security architects, engineers, analysts, and agency stakeholders to align solutions with business goals, cybersecurity frameworks, regulatory requirements, and organizational risk tolerance.
Participate in a monthly on-call rotation for the 24x7 SOC and provide after-hours maintenance, incident escalation support, and operational handoffs as needed.