Torchora
Back to Home

Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cybersecurity Analyst Lead

💰 $110,000 - $160,000

CybersecurityInformation SecurityITLeadership

🎯 Role Definition

The Cybersecurity Analyst Lead is a senior technical and people-leadership role responsible for directing detection, response, and threat-hunting operations across the organization. This role owns end-to-end incident response, SIEM and EDR strategy, detection engineering, vulnerability management, and cross-functional security programs. The lead mentors and grows a team of analysts, defines operational playbooks and KPIs, partners with engineering and business stakeholders to prioritize risk-reducing initiatives, and ensures the security program aligns with regulatory and business objectives. Ideal candidates combine deep hands-on technical expertise (SIEM, EDR, network forensics, cloud security) with proven leadership, process design, and stakeholder communication skills.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Cybersecurity Analyst / SOC Senior Analyst
  • Security Engineer / Detection Engineer
  • Incident Response Analyst / Threat Hunter

Advancement To:

  • Security Operations Manager / SOC Manager
  • Director of Security Operations / Head of Detection
  • Head of Security or Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

Lateral Moves:

  • Security Architect
  • Incident Response Lead / Forensics Lead
  • Cloud Security Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead and manage incident response activities from identification through containment, eradication and recovery, ensuring timely communication, root cause analysis, and lessons-learned documentation to reduce dwell time and repeat incidents.
  • Design, implement and tune SIEM use cases, correlation rules, log ingestion pipelines and dashboards (e.g., Splunk, Elastic, QRadar) to improve detection coverage and reduce false positives across endpoints, network and cloud telemetry.
  • Lead Threat Hunting engagements using telemetry from EDR, network sensors, cloud logs and threat intelligence, creating documented hypotheses, investigative playbooks and detection rules to proactively identify advanced threats.
  • Oversee endpoint detection and response (EDR) platform strategy and operations (e.g., CrowdStrike, SentinelOne), including policy management, alert triage runbooks, containment actions and automated response playbooks.
  • Drive vulnerability management and remediation prioritization by integrating vulnerability scanning results (e.g., Nessus, Qualys) with asset criticality, threat context and compensating controls to ensure high-risk issues are remediated on schedule.
  • Develop, maintain and exercise incident response playbooks, runbooks, escalation matrices and tabletop exercises for a range of incident types (ransomware, data exfiltration, insider threat, cloud misconfiguration).
  • Lead digital forensics and evidence collection for high-priority incidents, coordinating with internal legal, HR and external forensic partners to preserve chain-of-custody and support investigations.
  • Establish and report on SOC/KPI metrics (MTTR, MTTD, detection coverage, analyst efficiency) to executive leadership and use metrics to optimize operations and justify tooling investments.
  • Coordinate cross-functional security programs with Cloud, DevOps, Network, and Application teams to embed security controls, improve secure SDLC practices, and remediate identified control gaps.
  • Build and run a formal threat intelligence program: ingest external threat feeds, map to MITRE ATT&CK, operationalize IOCs, and align detection coverage to observed adversary tactics and techniques.
  • Mentor, hire and develop a high-performing analyst team, providing regular coaching, performance reviews, training plans and career pathing to increase capability and retention.
  • Design and implement automation and orchestration (SOAR) playbooks to accelerate triage and response workflows, reduce manual toil and scale the SOC’s effectiveness.
  • Own Privileged Access Management (PAM) coordination and investigations for suspected abuse of privileged accounts, ensuring authentication, authorization and access logging are robust and monitored.
  • Drive security program compliance efforts with frameworks and regulations (NIST CSF, ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS), providing evidence, remediation plans and control improvements where gaps are identified.
  • Conduct risk assessments and security reviews of third-party vendors and SaaS applications, establishing risk-based controls, contractual security requirements and ongoing monitoring.
  • Lead detection engineering initiatives: author and validate detection logic, unit test detection rules, maintain rule deployment pipelines, and measure efficacy against labeled telemetry data.
  • Manage incident communications, drafting incident reporting to stakeholders, board-level summaries for executives and retaining consistent, auditable incident records.
  • Oversee security tool lifecycle and procurement: evaluate vendor solutions, define technical requirements, run proof-of-concepts, and manage vendor relationships and licensing to maximize ROI.
  • Implement and enforce IAM and authentication best practices by reviewing role-based access, SSO integrations, MFA adoption, and anomalous authentication detections.
  • Collaborate with application and infrastructure teams to review architecture for security weaknesses, guide secure configuration standards, and implement compensating controls for high-risk systems.
  • Drive continuous improvement through retrospective analysis of incidents, post-incident action items and the integration of findings into detection content, hardening checklists and training.
  • Partner with Legal and Privacy to support breach notification decisions, evidence preservation for regulatory investigations, and implement technical controls required by contractual obligations or regulations.
  • Maintain and test disaster recovery and business continuity elements related to security operations, ensuring SOC resiliency and the ability to respond under degraded conditions.
  • Lead root cause analysis and remediation tracking for systemic issues, ensuring action plans are tracked to closure and repeat incidents are prevented by engineering fixes or process changes.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Provide periodic security awareness briefings and training to teams to reduce human risk factors and increase incident reporting.
  • Assist in budget planning for security operations, forecasting staffing and tooling needs tied to program goals.
  • Act as a subject matter expert for audits and external assessments, preparing documentation and responding to auditor questions.
  • Maintain up-to-date documentation of controls, SOPs, escalation paths and runbooks for operational continuity.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expertise in SIEM deployment and tuning (Splunk, Elastic Stack, IBM QRadar) with hands-on experience creating correlation rules, dashboards and incident workflows.
  • Advanced EDR/endpoint security knowledge (CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender ATP, SentinelOne) including policy design, threat containment and telemetry analysis.
  • Incident response and digital forensics skills: memory and disk analysis, timeline creation, artifact collection and chain-of-custody practices.
  • Threat hunting and adversary emulation using MITRE ATT&CK, log analytics, and behavior-based detection techniques.
  • Strong networking and protocol analysis skills (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, NetFlow) and experience with packet capture tools (Wireshark, Zeek).
  • Vulnerability assessment and remediation orchestration experience with scanning tools (Nessus, Qualys, Rapid7) and risk prioritization methodologies.
  • Cloud security expertise for AWS, Azure, or GCP: logging/monitoring (CloudTrail, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor), IAM security, container and serverless security best practices.
  • Experience with security automation and orchestration platforms (SOAR) and scripting for automation (Python, PowerShell, Bash).
  • Knowledge of identity and access management technologies (Okta, Azure AD), MFA, SSO and privilege management controls.
  • Familiarity with compliance and security frameworks (NIST CSF, CIS Controls, ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI-DSS) and translating requirements into operational controls.
  • Malware analysis fundamentals and familiarity with sandboxing tools, static and dynamic analysis techniques.
  • Experience integrating threat intelligence feeds and operationalizing indicators of compromise (IOCs) in detection platforms.
  • Proficiency with logging architectures, log normalization, retention strategies and storage optimization for forensic readiness.
  • Exposure to secure development and DevSecOps practices, including CI/CD pipeline scanning and IaC security checks.

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management skills: coaching, performance management and career development for analysts.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication—ability to translate technical incidents into executive-level summaries and actionable recommendations.
  • Proven stakeholder management: building trust across engineering, legal, product and business leadership to prioritize security initiatives.
  • Analytical problem-solving and critical thinking with a bias for actionable outcomes and data-driven decisions.
  • Project management aptitude: scoping initiatives, prioritizing work, and delivering programs on time with measurable outcomes.
  • Calm under pressure and experienced in leading high-severity incident response with clear command-and-control.
  • Teaching and mentoring ability to upskill less-experienced analysts and grow internal capabilities.
  • Strong attention to detail for forensic evidence preservation, audit trails and compliance documentation.
  • Collaborative mindset to work within cross-functional teams and influence without direct authority.
  • Continuous learning orientation to stay current on threat actor tactics, new tooling and evolving compliance requirements.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent technical degree and relevant experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Assurance, Computer Science, or related field.
  • Professional certifications such as CISSP, CISM, GCIA, GCIH, OSCP, CEH, or vendor certifications (Splunk Certified, CrowdStrike certifications).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Security / Cybersecurity
  • Network Engineering
  • Digital Forensics / Computer Forensics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–10+ years of progressive cybersecurity experience with at least 3–5 years in detection, incident response, or SOC operations.

Preferred:

  • 8+ years of hands-on security operations experience and 2–4 years leading or managing security analyst teams.
  • Demonstrated experience implementing and operating SIEM, EDR, vulnerability management, and SOAR tooling in production environments.
  • History of driving cross-functional security programs, operationalizing threat intelligence, and reducing mean time to detect/mean time to respond through process and automation improvements.
Explore More Careers