Chief Cyber Operations & Threat Intelligence Lead

Eetdbuyersguide; Allentown (Lehigh County); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

PPL is seeking a Senior Director of Cyber Operations to lead its enterprise cyber defense organization, including SOC, threat intelligence, detection engineering, and SOAR. This leader drives automation-first transformation and aligns operations to industry frameworks such as NIST CSF and AI RMF while overseeing risk for critical infrastructure.

The hybrid role requires 3 days onsite at one of our local offices: Allentown, PA; Providence, RI; or Louisville, KY.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, or a related field; Master’s degree preferred but not required
• 20+ years of experience in cybersecurity or related field, with senior leadership
• Proven experience in managing cybersecurity operations and incident response
• Strong leadership and project management skills
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities
• In-depth knowledge of cybersecurity frameworks and best practices
• Proficiency in security tools and technologies
• Experience managing large, diverse teams and leading complex projects
• Understanding of Agile principles and methods
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to adapt to new technologies and methodologies
• Ability to align IT transformation initiatives with the overall business strategy

Responsibilities

• Lead and evolve 24x7 SOC operations including monitoring, detection, and incident response
• Direct cyber operations across SOC, Threat Intelligence, Detection Engineering, Security Engineering, SOAR
• Drive operational maturity aligned to NIST CSF domains (Detect, Respond, Recover)
• Maintain executive-ready visibility into cyber risk, operational performance, and incident posture
• Lead enterprise cyber incident response and coordination for high-impact events
• Establish and mature playbooks, escalation models, and executive communication protocols
• Partner with legal, compliance, and business leadership during cyber events
• Ensure readiness through exercises aligned to NERC CIP and resilience requirements
• Operationalize threat intelligence into detection use cases
• Lead detection engineering program to improve fidelity and reduce noise
• Advance proactive threat hunting across enterprise and critical systems
• Own design, implementation, and optimization of cyber tooling and platforms
• Lead transition toward automation-first and Agentic SOC capabilities
• Deploy and scale advanced SIEM and XDR capabilities, SOAR platforms
• Ensure secure adoption and governance of AI in cyber operations aligned to NIST AI RMF
• Establish integrated Attack Surface Management across enterprise
• Lead risk-based vulnerability management prioritizing remediation by threat context
• Integrate asset, exposure, and threat data to drive measurable risk reduction
• Ensure cyber operations align with Regs like NERC CIP and support audits
• Coordinate with OT/IT teams to protect grid operations

Skills

Leadership

Cybersecurity strategy

Incident response

Threat intelligence

Automation

NIST CSF

Education

Bachelor's in CS/IT/Cybersecurity

Master's degree preferred

Tools

SIEM

XDR

SOAR

MCP

Agentic SOC

Job description

PPL is seeking a Senior Director of Cyber Operations to lead its enterprise cyber defense organization, including SOC, threat intelligence, detection engineering, and SOAR. This leader drives automation-first transformation and aligns operations to industry frameworks such as NIST CSF and AI RMF while overseeing risk for critical infrastructure.

The hybrid role requires 3 days onsite at one of our local offices: Allentown, PA; Providence, RI; or Louisville, KY.