Senior Incident Response Lead – Cyber Defense

Commonwealth of VA Careers; Richmond (VA); On-site; USD 85,000 - 106,000; Full time

Job summary

Commonwealth of VA Careers is seeking an Information Security Officer in Virginia to lead the agency’s incident response program. The role acts as the main DBHDS point of contact with VITA, guiding incidents from detection through containment, eradication, recovery, and closure.

The position requires coordinating responses to malware, phishing, data loss, and PHI breaches, analyzing alerts and logs, supporting investigations, and maintaining robust incident documentation.

Qualifications

• Experience leading or coordinating cybersecurity incident response in enterprise, government, healthcare, or public sector environments.
• Knowledge of the cybersecurity incident lifecycle: identification, triage, containment, eradication, recovery, closure.
• Experience handling major incidents: ransomware, phishing, compromised accounts, unauthorized access, data loss, DDoS, insider threats, PHI/PII breaches.
• Ability to analyze security alerts, logs, endpoint/network activity, vulnerability data, and threat intel.
• Experience supporting forensic investigations, evidence preservation, chain-of-custody, root cause analysis.
• Ability to prepare incident reports, timelines, executive briefings, and corrective action tracking.
• Strong communication, analytical, organizational, and judgment skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead the agency’s incident response program in line with VITA procedures and Commonwealth security requirements.
• Serve as the primary DBHDS point of contact with VITA and oversee incidents end‑to‑end from identification to closure.
• Coordinate responses to malware, ransomware, phishing, compromised accounts, data loss, and PHI breaches.
• Analyze security alerts/logs and support forensic investigations and evidence preservation.
• Prepare incident documentation, timelines, reports, and escalation guidance; provide on-call support 24/7.
• Maintain incident response policies, playbooks, and communication processes; coordinate tabletop exercises and audits.

Skills

Incident response

Incident lifecycle

Major incidents

Security analytics

Forensic investigations

Incident reporting

Communication

Job description

Commonwealth of VA Careers is seeking an Information Security Officer in Virginia to lead the agency’s incident response program. The role acts as the main DBHDS point of contact with VITA, guiding incidents from detection through containment, eradication, recovery, and closure.

The position requires coordinating responses to malware, phishing, data loss, and PHI breaches, analyzing alerts and logs, supporting investigations, and maintaining robust incident documentation.