Senior Cyber Threat Intelligence Director

Synchrony Financial; Charlotte (NC); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 290,000; Full time

Job summary

Synchrony Financial seeks a Cyber Intelligence Leader to drive CTI, detection engineering, and cyber hunt programs. You will translate signals into actionable intelligence, create proactive hunts, and deliver measurable detection improvements across the enterprise.

The role partners with JSOC, Incident Response, Vulnerability Management, and infrastructure teams to strengthen cyber defenses and reduce adversary dwell time. Travel may be required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent.
• 8–12+ years of cybersecurity with depth in threat intelligence, threat hunting, detection engineering, and/or incident response.
• 3+ years leading teams and/or enterprise programs with measurable outcomes.
• Experience building and operationalizing detections within a SIEM/EDR environment and partnering with SOC/IR.
• Strong knowledge of adversary tactics and frameworks (MITRE ATT&CK).
• Proficiency with security telemetry across endpoint, network, cloud, and edge; strong investigative mindset.
• Strong written and verbal communication; ability to brief executives and produce clear technical docs/runbooks.
• Ability and flexibility to travel for business as required.

Responsibilities

• Define intelligence requirements and collection plans focused on threats relevant to financial services and Synchrony's environment.
• Produce strategic, operational, and tactical intelligence (executive reporting, actor/campaign tracking, TTP and IOC packages).
• Translate intelligence into detection content, hunt hypotheses, response playbooks, and prioritized mitigations.
• Manage the intelligence lifecycle (collection → analysis → production → dissemination → feedback).
• Lead hypothesis-driven hunts mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, focused on high-risk scenarios.
• Coordinate hunts across endpoint, network, cloud, identity, and edge/WAF; document hunt playbooks.
• Escalate validated suspicious activity to Incident Response and support containment/remediation as needed.
• Convert hunt findings into durable improvements: detections, data onboarding/enrichment, and control remediation.
• Lead a detection engineering function responsible for building and maintaining detection content and analytics.
• Develop detection standards (naming, severity, testing criteria, evidence requirements, runbooks) and a structured tuning process.
• Ensure detections are threat-informed (ATT&CK-mapped), measurable, and aligned to JSOC workflow and triage capacity.
• Drive detection validation through purple-team/attack simulation outcomes and real incident lessons learned.
• Partner with SOC to improve alert fidelity, reduce noise, and ensure clear escalation criteria and responder guidance.
• Maintain a detection backlog and release cadence; ensure change control and documentation for auditability.
• Perform other duties and/or special projects as assigned.

Skills

Threat intelligence

Threat hunting

Detection engineering

Incident response

Team leadership

MITRE ATT&CK

SIEM/EDR

Security telemetry

Executive briefing

Travel flexibility

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent

Tools

SIEM/EDR platforms

Job description

Synchrony Financial seeks a Cyber Intelligence Leader to drive CTI, detection engineering, and cyber hunt programs. You will translate signals into actionable intelligence, create proactive hunts, and deliver measurable detection improvements across the enterprise.

The role partners with JSOC, Incident Response, Vulnerability Management, and infrastructure teams to strengthen cyber defenses and reduce adversary dwell time. Travel may be required.