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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cybersecurity Engineer

💰 $ - $

CybersecurityInformation SecurityITSecurity Engineering

🎯 Role Definition

The Cybersecurity Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining enterprise security controls and capabilities that protect critical systems, data, and users. This role blends hands-on technical engineering—deploying and tuning SIEM, EDR, IDS/IPS, and cloud security tools—with security architecture, threat hunting, incident response, and cross-functional collaboration to reduce risk and enable secure business operations. The position requires deep familiarity with modern attack techniques, secure-by-design principles, automation and orchestration, and regulatory/compliance standards.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Cybersecurity Analyst / SOC Analyst
  • Network Engineer or Systems Administrator with security focus
  • Incident Response / Forensics Technician

Advancement To:

  • Senior Cybersecurity Engineer
  • Security Architect
  • Security Engineering Manager
  • Head of Information Security / CISO (long-term)

Lateral Moves:

  • Cloud Security Engineer
  • DevSecOps Engineer
  • Security Consultant / Penetration Tester
  • Threat Hunter / Intelligence Analyst

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, deploy, and maintain enterprise security controls and architecture, including firewalls, IDS/IPS, network segmentation, VPNs, and proxy technologies to protect on-premises and cloud infrastructure.
  • Operate and optimize Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms (e.g., Splunk, Elastic, QRadar), building parsers, detection rules, dashboards, and correlation rules to surface high-fidelity alerts and reduce mean time to detect (MTTD).
  • Lead incident response activities: triage alerts, perform root cause analysis, coordinate containment and remediation actions, document incident timelines, and drive post-incident reviews and improvements.
  • Implement, tune, and manage Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions (e.g., CrowdStrike, SentinelOne) to detect, isolate, and remediate endpoint threats and advanced persistent threats (APTs).
  • Conduct proactive threat hunting across logs, endpoints, network telemetry, and cloud logs using hypothesis-driven investigations and threat intelligence feeds to discover hidden adversary activity.
  • Run regular vulnerability management programs: schedule and execute authenticated and unauthenticated scans (Nessus, Qualys), prioritize findings by business risk, coordinate remediation with owners, and validate fixes.
  • Perform security architecture reviews and threat modeling for new applications, services, and infrastructure changes; provide prescriptive mitigation guidance and ensure secure design patterns are implemented.
  • Integrate security into CI/CD pipelines and developer workflows: build SAST/DAST scans, dependency scanning (SCA), container image scanning, and automated policy gates in Jenkins/GitHub Actions/GitLab CI.
  • Design and implement identity and access management (IAM) controls: least-privilege models, role-based access control (RBAC), single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and privileged access management (PAM).
  • Develop and maintain detection content, playbooks, and runbooks for incident response and SOC operationalization; automate repeatable workflows using SOAR (Phantom, Demisto) or custom automation.
  • Architect and secure cloud-native environments (AWS, Azure, GCP): configure cloud SOC logging, IAM hardening, network controls (VPCs, NSGs), encryption at rest/in transit, and cloud-native WAFs and security services.
  • Lead or support red team / purple team exercises and collaborate with penetration testers to validate defenses, tune detections, and reduce the organization’s attack surface.
  • Manage cryptographic solutions and key management practices, including PKI, certificate lifecycle, TLS/SSL configuration, and encryption policies for data in transit and at rest.
  • Develop and run secure configuration baselines and hardening standards, leveraging CIS benchmarks, custom IaC policies, and automated remediation for servers, endpoints, and cloud services.
  • Maintain threat intelligence ingestion and operationalization: map TOEs to detection coverage, update IOC/IOA lists, and translate intelligence into detection use-cases and mitigations.
  • Support compliance and audit objectives: prepare evidence for assessments (NIST CSF, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA), remediate audit findings, and liaise with internal/external auditors.
  • Monitor and improve logging, observability, and telemetry coverage across applications and infrastructure to ensure detectability of relevant attack patterns and business-critical events.
  • Lead or participate in security-focused projects and integrations (M&A security assessments, identity migrations, cloud adoption programs), owning timelines, deliverables, and cross-team coordination.
  • Provide guidance and technical mentorship to junior engineers, SOC analysts, and platform teams on secure engineering practices and operationalizing security controls.
  • Evaluate, pilot, and recommend security tools and technologies; manage relationships with vendors, negotiate SLAs, and ensure continuous optimization of security tooling costs and effectiveness.
  • Create and deliver security awareness training, phishing simulations, and targeted technical workshops to uplift engineering and operational teams’ security posture.
  • Maintain up-to-date incident response plans, playbooks, and business continuity procedures, and coordinate tabletop exercises with stakeholders to validate readiness.
  • Analyze security telemetry and risk metrics to produce executive and operational reports that inform security roadmaps, KPIs (MTTD, MTTR), and investment decisions.
  • Implement network and application layer protections including WAF tuning, DDoS mitigation, API security validation, and microsegmentation strategies for east-west traffic control.
  • Drive improvements to secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC) adoption, developer security champions programs, and security gating based on risk acceptance thresholds.

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.
  • Assist compliance teams with evidence collection for audits and control testing.
  • Provide on-call support and rotate in SOC/incident response duty roster when required.
  • Help maintain an internal knowledge base of detection rules, investigative techniques, and remediation playbooks.
  • Participate in vendor selection and proof-of-concept evaluations for new security platforms.
  • Liaise with legal and privacy teams for breach notifications, data protection incidents, and cross-border data handling issues.
  • Mentor interns or rotational engineers placed in security projects.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • SIEM engineering: rule development, log parsing, security analytics, and dashboarding (Splunk, ELK, QRadar).
  • Endpoint protection/EDR administration and threat hunting (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Carbon Black).
  • Cloud security architecture and operations in AWS, Azure, and/or GCP (CloudTrail, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Logging).
  • Vulnerability assessment and remediation workflows using Nessus, Qualys, Tenable, or OpenVAS.
  • Scripting and automation: Python, PowerShell, Bash for automation, detection engineering, and tool integrations.
  • DevSecOps and CI/CD security: SAST/DAST tools, container image scanning, IaC scanning (Terraform, CloudFormation), GitHub/GitLab CI automation.
  • Network security: firewalls, IDS/IPS, VLANs, VPNs, routing, and secure network design.
  • Identity and access management: SSO, OAuth/OIDC, SAML, RBAC, and privileged access solutions.
  • Threat intelligence and detection engineering: IOC/IOA management, threat modeling, YARA, and ATT&CK mapping.
  • SOAR and incident automation: playbook development and orchestration (Demisto, Splunk Phantom, native SOAR tools).
  • Secure configuration and baseline management: CIS benchmarks, hardening guides, and centralized configuration enforcement.
  • Cryptography fundamentals and PKI management, TLS configuration, and key lifecycle management.
  • Familiarity with compliance frameworks and standards: NIST CSF/800-53, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA.
  • Container and orchestration security for Kubernetes and Docker (runtime security, pod/network policies).
  • Forensics and root cause analysis: disk imaging, memory analysis, log correlation, and evidence preservation.

Soft Skills

  • Clear verbal and written communication for technical and executive audiences.
  • Cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder management across engineering, ops, product, and legal teams.
  • Strong analytical problem-solving and investigative instincts for complex incident scenarios.
  • Organized, process-driven, and able to document repeatable procedures and runbooks.
  • Ability to prioritize tasks under pressure and manage multiple security projects concurrently.
  • Coaching and mentoring mindset to upskill junior members and developers.
  • Adaptability to evolving threat landscapes and new security technologies.
  • Tactical decision-making in fast-moving incident response situations.
  • Attention to detail when tuning detections and validating remediations.
  • Customer-oriented approach when working with internal teams to balance security and business needs.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Assurance, Computer Science, or equivalent.
  • Professional certifications such as CISSP, CISM, OSCP, CEH, GIAC (GCIA, GCIH, GSEC), AWS Certified Security—Specialty.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Security / Cybersecurity
  • Computer Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Network Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years of progressive experience in cybersecurity engineering, SOC operations, or security architecture roles.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of hands-on experience building and operating security controls at scale in enterprise or cloud environments.
  • Demonstrated incident response and digital forensics experience supporting production security incidents.
  • Prior exposure to DevSecOps practices, secure SDLC integration, and cloud native security operations.
  • Experience with compliance programs (NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS) and supporting audit activities.
  • Proven track record of developing detection content, playbooks, and automated remediation workflows.
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