Job Description – 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 behavior 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:
- 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.
- Executive summary
- Incident timeline
- Scope and impact
- Root cause
- Attack vector
- IOCs and TTPs
- Investigation findings
- Containment and remediation actions
- Control gaps
- Corrective and preventive recommendations
- Lessons learned
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.
