Director, Cybersecurity Operations

KLDiscovery; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

KLDiscovery in McLean, VA seeks a Director, Cybersecurity Operations to lead Security Operations, Incident Response, and Security Engineering. This is a player‑coach leadership role reporting to the CISO, steering MDR deployment, AI‑informed detection, and a functionally specialized security team.

You will drive threat intel, vulnerability management, and control validation while maturing the team and the tooling with SIEM, SOAR, and automation to reduce risk for clients.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive experience in information security, including at least 7 years in a security leadership role
• Hands-on background in security engineering, incident response, cloud security, or AppSec
• Experience operating and maturing an MDR deployment in a corporate environment
• Familiarity with cloud-native security and CSPM, IAM governance, and automated response tooling
• Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills

Responsibilities

• Own MDR relationships, including SLA management and threat-hunt reviews
• Lead the incident response function: runbooks, major incidents, executive communication, post-incident analysis
• Oversee SOC detection engineering: SIEM rules, SOAR playbooks, automated actions
• Direct and develop security analyst pool and redeploy capacity for MDR and threat hunting
• Oversee four engineering lanes: endpoint, identity, cloud, application security
• Drive security architecture reviews and security tooling strategy across projects
• Lead threat intelligence operationalization and risk inputs for GRC
• Manage vulnerability lifecycle governance and remediation tracking
• Drive AI security posture and model/testing governance
• Build a culture of automation-first execution and continuous improvement

Skills

Security operations

Incident response

Security engineering

Threat intelligence

Vulnerability management

AppSec

MDR

Automation

Cloud security

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Information Security

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Bachelor's degree in Engineering

Bachelor's degree in Business

Master's degree or MBA with security focus

CISSP

CISM

CISA

GPEN

GCIA

Job description

Role overview

The Director, Cybersecurity Operations leads Security Operations and Incident Response, Security Engineering, Vulnerability Management, and Threat Intelligence. This is a player-coach leadership role reporting directly to the CISO, partnering with the Director, Cyber GRC as one unified cyber team. The Director will bring hands‑on technical depth, strong leadership capability, and the ability to modernize security operations through MDR deployment, AI‑informed detection, and a security engineering team organized around functional specialization.

Key responsibilities

Security operations and incident response Security operations and incident response

• Own the MDR relationship, including SLA management, escalation accountability, detection tuning, and quarterly threat hunt reviews


• Lead the incident response function: IR runbooks, major incident coordination, executive communication during active incidents, and post‑incident root cause analysis


• Oversee SOC detection engineering, ensuring SIEM rules, SOAR playbooks, and automated response actions are maintained, tested, and tuned to the current threat landscape


• Direct and develop the security analyst pool, redeploying analyst capacity from frontline triage toward MDR validation, threat hunt support, and stakeholder reporting

Security engineering

• Oversee four specialized engineering lanes [endpoint, identity, cloud, and application security], ensuring each lane has clear ownership, defined scope, and measurable outcomes


• Drive security architecture reviews and engineering decisions for large or complex IT projects, ensuring security requirements are built in rather than bolted on


• Shape the security tooling stack strategy, evaluating, selecting, and retiring tools across endpoint, identity, cloud, and application security


• Enforce automation‑first engineering practices, including IaC security gates, CI/CD pipeline security, CSPM auto‑remediation, and SOAR‑driven response workflows

Threat intelligence, vulnerability management, and control validation

• Lead the operationalization of threat intelligence, translating MDR findings and external threat data into detection rule updates, architecture decisions, and risk register inputs for the GRC team


• Own the vulnerability management lifecycle: scanning coverage, risk‑based prioritization, remediation tracking, and SLA enforcement


• Own the purple team and control validation program, confirming that deployed controls operate as intended and that detection capabilities fire correctly against known attack techniques


• Drive threat modeling across the engineering function, identifying attack paths before they are exploited and feeding findings into remediation prioritization

AppSec, cloud, and AI security

• Oversee the AppSec function: secure SDLC, code review gates, SAST/DAST tooling, and security collaboration with the Product and Engineering teams


• Own cloud security posture management: CSPM, cloud workload protection, cloud IAM governance, and cloud‑native security architecture


• Set the team‑wide AI security posture, overseeing AI security controls across all engineering lanes, including model security, prompt injection testing, and AI tool access governance in partnership with cyber leadership

MDR, automation, and tooling modernization

• Lead the ongoing maturation of the MDR deployment, expanding coverage, improving response fidelity, and integrating MDR outputs with internal SIEM, IAM, and compliance evidence workflows


• Champion security automation across the team, reducing manual toil in detection, response, vulnerability tracking, and reporting through SOAR, scripting, and platform integrations


• Evaluate emerging security technologies and make build/buy/partner recommendations to the CISO with clear business and risk rationale

Team leadership and CISO partnership

• Lead, develop, and performance‑manage a lean engineering team


• Partner with the Director, Cyber GRC as one unified cyber function, feeding operational threat intelligence into the risk register, supporting compliance evidence for technical controls, and jointly presenting security posture


• Provide regular metrics and reporting to the CISO on incident trends, control coverage, MDR performance, vulnerability posture, and team development


• Build a team culture of continuous improvement, automation‑first execution, and proactive security, where threat hunting and control validation are protected activities rather than aspirational ones

Qualifications

Experience

• 15+ years of progressive experience in information security, including at least 7 years in a security leadership role


• Demonstrated ownership of a security operations or engineering function at the Director or equivalent level


• Experience operating and maturing an MDR deployment (CrowdStrike Falcon Complete, Arctic Wolf, Expel, or equivalent) in a corporate environment


• Hands‑on background in at least two of the following: security engineering, penetration testing/offensive security, cloud security, application security, or incident response; this is not a purely strategic role


• Demonstrated experience deploying or maturing security automation, such as SOAR playbooks, detection engineering, IaC security, or CI/CD pipeline security


• Familiarity with cloud‑native security (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including CSPM, cloud IAM, and workload protection

Technical knowledge

• Working knowledge of cybersecurity frameworks such as NIST SP 800‑171, ISO 27001, and SOC 2


• Understanding of the vulnerability management lifecycle: scanning, prioritization, remediation tracking, and SLA enforcement


• Familiarity with AppSec disciplines: SAST/DAST tooling, secure SDLC, and security gate integration into CI/CD


• Understanding of IAM security governance (PAM, access review programs, and SSO/MFA architecture) as distinct from IT provisioning execution


• Experience with AI security considerations (model testing, prompt injection, AI tool access governance, and emerging AI governance frameworks such as the NIST AI RMF and ISO 42001) is a meaningful differentiator


• Foundational awareness of CMMC requirements

General abilities

• An exceptional communicator, able to translate complex cyber risk and compliance concepts into clear business language for executives, clients, and regulators alike


• A natural collaborator and client‑facing presence, comfortable leading enterprise client security discussions, representing KLDiscovery in due diligence meetings, and building trust with external stakeholders


• Business‑minded, balancing security requirements against commercial realities and making practical decisions without sacrificing rigor


• A continuous learner with genuine curiosity, energized by a fast‑growing company and a rapidly evolving regulatory and threat landscape


• Discreet and trusted, exercising sound judgment, maintaining confidentiality, and operating with professionalism

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Information Security, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field required


• Professional certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CISA, GPEN, GCIA, or other GIAC certifications strongly preferred


• Master's degree or MBA with a security focus preferred

Our mission and core values

We bring clarity, trust, and meaning to data for clients navigating legal matters worldwide.

Client is Always in the Room. We operate and make decisions as if the client is in the room. We anticipate their needs, consider their perspective, and prioritize their best interests.

Better Every Day. We improve our tomorrow by always striving to be better than today. We embrace curiosity, question assumptions, and raise the bar constantly.

Own the Outcome. We bring an unwavering bias for action, act with urgency, and hold ourselves accountable to our clients and each other.

Deliver Results Together. We collaborate obsessively to achieve shared success. We assume good intentions, debate ideas thoughtfully, treat each other with respect, and fully commit once decisions are made.

Our culture shapes our actions, our products, and the relationships we forge with our customers.