Director, Cybersecurity Operations

Role overview
The Director, Cybersecurity Operations leads Security Operations and Incident Response, Security Engineering, Vulnerability Management, and Threat Intelligence. This is a player-coach leadership role reporting directly to the CISO, partnering with the Director, Cyber GRC as one unified cyber team. The Director will bring hands-on technical depth, strong leadership capability, and the ability to modernize security operations through MDR deployment, AI-informed detection, and a security engineering team organized around functional specialization.
Key responsibilities
Security operations and incident response Security operations and incident response

Own the MDR relationship, including SLA management, escalation accountability, detection tuning, and quarterly threat hunt reviews

Lead the incident response function: IR runbooks, major incident coordination, executive communication during active incidents, and post-incident root cause analysis

Oversee SOC detection engineering, ensuring SIEM rules, SOAR playbooks, and automated response actions are maintained, tested, and tuned to the current threat landscape

Direct and develop the security analyst pool, redeploying analyst capacity from frontline triage toward MDR validation, threat hunt support, and stakeholder reporting

Security engineering

Oversee four specialized engineering lanes [endpoint, identity, cloud, and application security], ensuring each lane has clear ownership, defined scope, and measurable outcomes

Drive security architecture reviews and engineering decisions for large or complex IT projects, ensuring security requirements are built in rather than bolted on

Shape the security tooling stack strategy, evaluating, selecting, and retiring tools across endpoint, identity, cloud, and application security

Enforce automation-first engineering practices, including IaC security gates, CI/CD pipeline security, CSPM auto-remediation, and SOAR-driven response workflows

Threat intelligence, vulnerability management, and control validation

Lead the operationalization of threat intelligence, translating MDR findings and external threat data into detection rule updates, architecture decisions, and risk register inputs for the GRC team

Own the vulnerability management lifecycle: scanning coverage, risk-based prioritization, remediation tracking, and SLA enforcement

Own the purple team and control validation program, confirming that deployed controls operate as intended and that detection capabilities fire correctly against known attack techniques

Drive threat modeling across the engineering function, identifying attack paths before they are exploited and feeding findings into remediation prioritization

AppSec, cloud, and AI security

Oversee the AppSec function: secure SDLC, code review gates, SAST/DAST tooling, and security collaboration with the Product and Engineering teams

Own cloud security posture management: CSPM, cloud workload protection, cloud IAM governance, and cloud-native security architecture

Set the team-wide AI security posture, overseeing AI security controls across all engineering lanes, including model security, prompt injection testing, and AI tool access governance in partnership with cyber leadership

MDR, automation, and tooling modernization

Lead the ongoing maturation of the MDR deployment, expanding coverage, improving response fidelity, and integrating MDR outputs with internal SIEM, IAM, and compliance evidence workflows

Champion security automation across the team, reducing manual toil in detection, response, vulnerability tracking, and reporting through SOAR, scripting, and platform integrations

Evaluate emerging security technologies and make build/buy/partner recommendations to the CISO with clear business and risk rationale

Team leadership and CISO partnership

Lead, develop, and performance-manage a lean engineering team

Partner with the Director, Cyber GRC as one unified cyber function, feeding operational threat intelligence into the risk register, supporting compliance evidence for technical controls, and jointly presenting security posture

Provide regular metrics and reporting to the CISO on incident trends, control coverage, MDR performance, vulnerability posture, and team development

Build a team culture of continuous improvement, automation-first execution, and proactive security, where threat hunting and control validation are protected activities rather than aspirational ones

Qualifications

Experience

15+ years of progressive experience in information security, including at least 7 years in a security leadership role

Demonstrated ownership of a security operations or engineering function at the Director or equivalent level

Experience operating and maturing an MDR deployment (CrowdStrike Falcon Complete, Arctic Wolf, Expel, or equivalent) in a corporate environment

Hands-on background in at least two of the following: security engineering, penetration testing/offensive security, cloud security, application security, or incident response; this is not a purely strategic role

Demonstrated experience deploying or maturing security automation, such as SOAR playbooks, detection engineering, IaC security, or CI/CD pipeline security

Familiarity with cloud-native security (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including CSPM, cloud IAM, and workload protection

Technical knowledge

Working knowledge of cybersecurity frameworks such as NIST SP 800-171, ISO 27001, and SOC 2

Understanding of the vulnerability management lifecycle: scanning, prioritization, remediation tracking, and SLA enforcement

Familiarity with AppSec disciplines: SAST/DAST tooling, secure SDLC, and security gate integration into CI/CD

Understanding of IAM security governance (PAM, access review programs, and SSO/MFA architecture) as distinct from IT provisioning execution

Experience with AI security considerations (model testing, prompt injection, AI tool access governance, and emerging AI governance frameworks such as the NIST AI RMF and ISO 42001) is a meaningful differentiator

Foundational awareness of CMMC requirements

General abilities

An exceptional communicator, able to translate complex cyber risk and compliance concepts into clear business language for executives, clients, and regulators alike

A natural collaborator and client-facing presence, comfortable leading enterprise client security discussions, representing KLDiscovery in due diligence meetings, and building trust with external stakeholders

Business-minded, balancing security requirements against commercial realities and making practical decisions without sacrificing rigor

A continuous learner with genuine curiosity, energized by a fast-growing company and a rapidly evolving regulatory and threat landscape

Discreet and trusted, exercising sound judgment, maintaining confidentiality, and operating with professionalism

Education

Bachelor's degree in Information Security, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field required

Professional certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CISA, GPEN, GCIA, or other GIAC certifications strongly preferred

Master's degree or MBA with a security focus preferred

Our mission and core values
We bring clarity, trust, and meaning to data for clients navigating legal matters worldwide.
Client is Always in the Room. We operate and make decisions as if the client is in the room. We anticipate their needs, consider their perspective, and prioritize their best interests.
Better Every Day. We improve our tomorrow by always striving to be better than today. We embrace curiosity, question assumptions, and raise the bar constantly.
Own the Outcome. We bring an unwavering bias for action, act with urgency, and hold ourselves accountable to our clients and each other.
Deliver Results Together. We collaborate obsessively to achieve shared success. We assume good intentions, debate ideas thoughtfully, treat each other with respect, and fully commit once decisions are made.
Our culture shapes our actions, our products, and the relationships we forge with our customers.
Originally posted on Himalayas