Senior Cybersecurity Incident Response Specialist

Experience: 8–10 Years

Function: Cybersecurity – Incident Response / DFIR
Role Level: Senior

Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced Cybersecurity Incident Response Specialist with 8–10 years of hands-on cybersecurity experience to manage and investigate security incidents across enterprise environments.
The candidate will be responsible for end-to-end ownership of cybersecurity incidents, including triage, investigation, containment, eradication, recovery, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), malware analysis, and digital forensic analysis. The role also requires strong customer-facing skills to lead incident discussions, provide regular updates, explain technical findings, and present investigation outcomes and recommendations.

Key Responsibilities

Incident Response & Investigation

• Take end-to-end ownership of cybersecurity incidents from initial detection through closure.
• Lead investigation of Critical, High, and complex security incidents and coordinate response activities across relevant teams.
• Perform incident triage, scoping, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident analysis.
• Investigate incidents involving ransomware, malware, phishing, account compromise, credential theft, data exfiltration, insider threats, web attacks, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and other advanced threats.
• Analyze security alerts and correlate information across EDR, SIEM, network, identity, cloud, email, and other security technologies.
• Develop incident timelines and determine the attack vector, affected assets, compromised accounts, attacker activity, persistence mechanisms, and overall impact.
• Identify Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), attacker Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs), and map findings to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
• Coordinate with SOC, Threat Hunting, Threat Intelligence, IT, Cloud, Network, IAM, Application, Legal, and other stakeholders during major incidents.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

• Perform detailed Root Cause Analysis for security incidents.
• Determine the initial attack vector, contributing factors, security/control gaps, and reasons existing preventive or detective controls did not stop or detect the activity earlier.
• Conduct post-incident reviews and lessons-learned sessions.
• Develop clear corrective and preventive actions based on investigation findings.
• Track remediation recommendations with relevant stakeholders through closure.
• Prepare comprehensive RCA reports suitable for technical teams, management, and customers.

Malware Analysis

• Perform static and dynamic malware analysis to understand malicious file behaviour and capabilities.
• Analyze suspicious executables, scripts, PowerShell commands, documents, URLs, and other artifacts.
• Identify malware persistence mechanisms, command-and-control activity, network indicators, file-system changes, registry modifications, and related behaviors.
• Extract IOCs and behavioral indicators for threat hunting and detection engineering.
• Perform malware sandboxing and behavioral analysis where required.
• Provide recommendations for detection, containment, and prevention based on malware-analysis findings.

Digital Forensics

• Perform digital forensic investigations on endpoints and other relevant systems.
• Analyze Windows/Linux artifacts, event logs, file systems, registry artifacts, browser artifacts, authentication logs, memory artifacts, and other forensic evidence.
• Perform disk and memory analysis where required.
• Collect and preserve digital evidence following appropriate forensic procedures and chain-of-custody requirements.
• Build forensic timelines and reconstruct attacker activities.
• Determine the scope and impact of compromise using forensic evidence.
• Document forensic findings clearly and maintain investigation evidence appropriately.

Customer & Stakeholder Management

• Act as a key technical point of contact for customers during cybersecurity incidents.
• Lead incident calls and communicate investigation progress, impact, containment status, risks, and next steps.
• Provide timely and accurate incident updates to customers and internal leadership.
• Translate complex technical investigation findings into clear business-level communication.
• Manage customer expectations during high-severity and time-sensitive incidents.
• Present RCA and forensic investigation findings to customers and senior stakeholders.
• Handle technical questions and confidently explain investigation methodology, evidence, conclusions, and recommendations.
• Coordinate with multiple internal and customer teams to drive incidents toward timely resolution.

Incident Reporting & Documentation

• Prepare detailed incident investigation reports, including:

o    Executive summary
o    Incident timeline
o    Scope and impact
o    Root cause
o    Attack vector
o    IOCs and TTPs
o    Investigation findings
o    Containment and remediation actions
o    Control gaps
o    Corrective and preventive recommendations
o    Lessons learned

• Maintain accurate incident records, evidence, investigation notes, and supporting documentation.
• Contribute to the development and improvement of Incident Response playbooks, SOPs, investigation procedures, and escalation processes.

Required Technical Skills
The candidate should have strong hands-on experience in:

• Cybersecurity Incident Response / DFIR
• Security Incident Investigation
• Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
• Digital Forensics
• Malware Analysis
• Threat Hunting
• Endpoint and Network Investigation
• Windows and Linux Forensics
• Disk and Memory Analysis
• Log Analysis and Timeline Reconstruction
• IOC and TTP Analysis
• MITRE ATT&CK Framework
• SIEM platforms such as Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, QRadar, or similar
• EDR/XDR platforms such as CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, SentinelOne, Cortex XDR, or similar
• Network security technologies including Firewall, IDS/IPS, Proxy, DNS, VPN, and WAF
• Cloud security investigation across AWS, Azure, and/or GCP environments
• Identity and authentication-related investigations
• Email and phishing investigations
• Forensic and malware-analysis tools such as Volatility, Autopsy, FTK, EnCase, Wireshark, Sysinternals, YARA, Ghidra, IDA, or equivalent tools
• Scripting/automation using Python, PowerShell, or similar technologies would be an advantage.

Required Experience

• 8–10 years of overall cybersecurity experience, with significant hands-on experience in Incident Response, DFIR, SOC, Threat Hunting, or related security domains.
• Demonstrated experience independently handling complex and high-severity cybersecurity incidents.
• Strong experience conducting RCA and presenting investigation findings.
• Hands-on experience with malware and forensic investigations.
• Experience handling customer-facing security incidents and leading technical/customer incident calls.
• Experience coordinating investigations involving multiple technical and business teams.
• Ability to work effectively under pressure during Critical/High-severity incidents.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.

Communication & Leadership Skills

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong customer-facing and stakeholder-management capabilities.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to lead incident bridges/calls during critical incidents.
• Strong documentation and report-writing skills.
• Ability to take ownership, make investigation decisions, and drive incidents to closure.
• Ability to mentor junior Incident Response/SOC analysts and provide technical guidance during investigations.