Incident Response Lead - Remote

1US37 Strada U.S. Payroll, LLC; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 108,000 - 132,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Retirement plans

Learning opportunities

Paid leave (vacation, sick, parental)

Job summary

Strada is seeking an experienced Incident Response Lead to own the execution of cybersecurity incident response across a global environment. You will drive cross-functional collaboration, coordinate containment and recovery, and provide clear, executive-ready updates during incidents.

You will mature incident response processes, develop playbooks, and lead tabletop exercises to continually improve readiness and resilience within a dynamic security program.

Qualifications

• 5+ years leading high-severity cybersecurity incidents.
• Experience building or shaping an incident response program.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with tech, legal, and execs.
• Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead incident response for major cybersecurity events with defined objectives and escalation.
• Oversee containment, eradication, recovery, and closure with detailed timelines and owners.
• Coordinate across security, cloud, network, and business teams to restore services.
• Provide timely situation reports and executive guidance.
• Design tabletop exercises to test readiness and improve playbooks.

Skills

Incident management

Leadership

Cross-functional

Communication

Data-driven

Ownership

Education

Bachelor’s degree

CISSP GCIA

Tools

SIEM

Job description

Our story Strada is a technology-enabled, people powered company committed to delivering world-class payroll, human capital management, and financial management solutions to organizations globally. With a team of more than 8,000 experts and over 30 years of expertise, Strada blends leading-edge technology with human ingenuity to help businesses across the globe design and deliver at scale. Supporting over 1,400 customers in 33 countries, Strada partners with customers at every stage of their journey, to help drive their vision forward. It’s why we’re so driven to connect passion with purpose. Our team’s experience in human insights and cloud technology gives companies and employees around the world the ability to power confident decisions, for life. With a comprehensive total rewards package, continuing education and training, and tremendous potential with a growing global organization, Strada is the perfect place to put your passion to work. To learn more about us, visit stradaglobal.com

We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Incident Response Lead to join our cybersecurity team. This individual will serve as the operational backbone of how Strada handles incidents and ensures Strada is prepared to respond effectively to cybersecurity incidents. This is an individual contributor leadership role with significant cross-functional influence. When things go wrong, you are the person who makes sure the right people are in the room, the right information is flowing, and nothing falls through the cracks. The right person for this role brings structure and rigor to complex situations, drives timely decisions, and helps restore services safely and quickly without waiting for a playbook to be handed to them. This role will strengthen Strada’s incident response readiness by maturing processes, playbooks, escalation paths, exercises, and cross-functional operating mechanisms. You will be a self-starter who turns ambiguity into practical, repeatable operating mechanisms and moves work forward without waiting for detailed direction. The role will partner closely with the SOC Leads, who own monitoring operations, detection engineering, alert triage processes, SIEM management, and SOC team performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead Cybersecurity Incident Response Act as incident lead for major cybersecurity incidents, establishing severity, objectives, workstreams, decision rights, communication cadence, and escalation paths.
• Direct the end-to-end response through validation and scoping, containment, eradication, recovery, and closure, maintaining a clear record of timelines, decisions, actions, and owners.
• Coordinate security, infrastructure, cloud, identity, network, application, vendor, and business teams to restore affected services safely and validate operational stability and residual risk.
• Provide concise, timely situation reports and decision recommendations to executives and stakeholders, translating technical findings into business impact and required actions.
• Partner with Legal, Privacy, Risk, Communications, Human Resources, Business Continuity, and customer-facing teams to meet regulatory, contractual, insurance, notification, and crisis communication obligations.
• Build readiness for incidents Own and mature incident response by establishing processes, enhancing tooling, and defining operational standards for handling incidents at scale
• Continually improve the incident response framework, major-incident plans, escalation criteria, call trees, and response and recovery playbooks, including clear handoffs with other teams.
• Design and facilitate tabletop exercises and simulations to test technical readiness, decision-making, communications, and recovery arrangements.
• Perform incident readiness activities, and support additional cybersecurity initiatives as needed in a dynamic global corporate environment
• Coach and enable the organization Provide expert guidance on complex incidents and mentor responders, analysts, and technical stakeholders in effective incident management practices.
• Lead post-incident reviews, assign and track corrective actions, and ensure lessons learned improve controls, architecture, detections, response capability, and operational resilience.

Qualifications and Experience

• Have 5+ years of experience in incident management, with direct experience leading high-severity cybersecurity incidents in complex, global, or distributed environments.
• Have built or significantly shaped an incident response program, ideally in an environment where you had to create structure rather than inherit it
• Demonstrate a strong sense of ownership and urgency, with the ability to operate independently and make sound decisions under pressure without waiting for direction
• Are comfortable working in unprecedented situations where processes are still being defined and guidance may be incomplete or conflicting, leaving things better than you found them
• Have a track record of effective cross-functional collaboration, particularly with technology, product, security, legal, communications, and executive leadership
• Have experience with cloud infrastructure incidents and enough technical depth across the stack to engage meaningfully with technology teams during response, including comfort navigating distributed systems, monitoring tools, and logs
• Are analytically minded, with experience using data (incident metrics, queries, trend analysis) to inform decisions during response and to drive operational improvements over time
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate clearly and calmly under pressure, both in real-time coordination and in post-incident written communications
• A strong record as a self-starter: you anticipate needs, identify gaps, set priorities, and drive work to completion with limited direction.
• Strong process-design and documentation skills, including process mapping, runbook development, workflow design, and translating lessons into repeatable operating practices.
• Proven coaching, facilitation, and change-enablement skills, with the ability to raise the capability and confidence of technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong knowledge of incident response methodologies and frameworks, including NIST SP 800-61, the SANS incident response lifecycle, and MITRE ATT&CK.
• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, GCIA, or equivalent are a plus.

What We Offer

• An opportunity to play a critical role in building a new cybersecurity organization.
• A dynamic and collaborative work environment.
• Professional development and career growth opportunities.
• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Flexible working arrangements.

Benefits

Benefits At Strada, we support your whole self—offering a range of benefits for your health, wellbeing, finances, and future.

• Health coverage
• Wellbeing programs
• Paid leave (vacation, sick, parental)
• Retirement plans
• Learning opportunities
• More
• All offers are contingent on successful completion of background checks, where permitted by law and as appropriate for the role. You’ll be informed of the specific checks applicable to your role and location during the recruitment process.

Our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At Strada, we support your whole self—offering a range of benefits for your health, wellbeing, finances, and future. These include health coverage, wellbeing programs, paid leave (vacation, sick, parental), retirement plans, learning opportunities, and more.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Strada is an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits discrimination based on legally protected characteristics. We provide reasonable accommodation for disabilities and religious practices.

Authorization to work in the Employing Country

To be considered, you must have current and future work authorization in the country where you're applying, without the need for visa sponsorship by Strada.

Salary Pay Range

Salary Pay Range Minimum - Maximum: $120,190.00 - $223,210.00 Pay Transparency Statement: Strada considers a variety of factors in determining whether to extend an offer of employment and in setting the appropriate compensation level, including, but not limited to, a candidate’s experience, education, certification/credentials, market data, internal equity, and geography. Strada makes these decisions on an individualized, non-discriminatory basis. Bonus and/or incentive eligibility are determined by role and level.

Disclaimer

Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities of this job to other entities; including but not limited to subsidiaries, partners, or purchasers of Strada business units.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement (duplicate)

Strada provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical condition, veteran, marital, parental, citizenship, or domestic partner status, or any other status protected by applicable national, federal, state or local law. Strada is committed to a diverse workforce and is an affirmative action employer. As pioneers in payroll, human capital and financial management solutions, we blend leading-edge technology with human ingenuity to keep you moving forward. Our team of over 8,000 experts bring decades of deep knowledge and experience to businesses around the globe helping them design and deliver at scale. Supporting over 1,400 customers across 33 countries, we embed ourselves at every stage of your journey, to help you drive your vision to value.