Lead Cyber Defense: Incident Response & SOC Manager

University of Connecticut; Storrs (CT); On-site; USD 95,000 - 124,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Defined contribution with employer 401

Excellent healthcare options

35 hour work week

22 paid vacation days per year

Employee tuition waivers

Job summary

University of Connecticut seeks an experienced Incident Response Manager & Security Operations Team Lead to guide the Security Operations and Incident Response functions within the Information Security Office. You will lead a team of cybersecurity professionals in monitoring, detecting, investigating, and recovering from incidents across campus.

You will serve as incident commander for significant events, coordinate across departments, and drive improvements to response maturity, tooling, and

Qualifications

• Must meet and maintain eligibility to work with sensitive data per university policy.
• Bachelor's degree plus 6+ years in infosecurity/IT; or 8+ years with an associate degree.
• 3+ years in Security Operations and Incident Response.
• 1+ year leading or supervising a cybersecurity team.
• Experience in enterprise incident response, reporting, and remediation.
• Experience with SIEM/EDR/TOAR and logging at scale.
• Knowledge of cloud security and common security frameworks (NIST, MITRE, CIS).

Responsibilities

• Lead the University's Security Operations and Incident Response programs.
• Direct day-to-day operations, prioritization, coaching, and performance management.
• Act as incident commander for significant cybersecurity incidents with cross‑department coordination.
• Participate in advanced investigations, threat hunting, forensics, containment, and recovery.
• Develop, maintain, and improve incident response plans, playbooks, and standards.
• Manage detection engineering, alert tuning, automation, and operational metrics.
• Coordinate security operations with infrastructure, cloud, identity, and research teams.
• Engage with incident response vendors, MSSPs, law enforcement, and external groups.
• Prepare dashboards, executive reporting, and KPIs for security operations.
• Lead tabletop exercises and security readiness activities.
• Contribute to security architecture reviews and staff development.
• Oversee staffing, training, and succession planning for SOC personnel.
• Manage projects related to monitoring, automation, and maturity.
• Stay current on threats and industry best practices.
• Support after-hours incident response as needed.
• Other related duties as assigned.

Skills

Leadership

Incident Leadership

Technical Expertise

Strategic Thinking

Communication

Project Management

Physical Demands

Education

Bachelor's degree in Information Security or IT

Master's degree (preferred)

Tools

Microsoft Sentinel

Splunk Enterprise Security

Microsoft Defender

CrowdStrike

Palo Alto Cortex

Splunk SOAR

Job description

University of Connecticut seeks an experienced Incident Response Manager & Security Operations Team Lead to guide the Security Operations and Incident Response functions within the Information Security Office. You will lead a team of cybersecurity professionals in monitoring, detecting, investigating, and recovering from incidents across campus.

You will serve as incident commander for significant events, coordinate across departments, and drive improvements to response maturity, tooling, and