Incident Response Analyst

As a member of the technology incident response team, the Incident Response Analyst contributes to the process of identifying, containing, analyzing, and recovering from incidents that impact business critical processes. They are responsible for contributing to the policies that facilitate activities within the Incident framework, the incident playbooks and decision trees, running tabletop incident exercises, running incident retrospectives, and contributing to the incident knowledge process within and outside the team.

They require a combination of technical and interpersonal skills, as well as certain qualities, such as proactivity, adaptability, responsibility, accountability, confidence, assertiveness, curiosity, eagerness, ethics, and trustworthiness.

Key responsibilities & duties include: 

Incident Assessment:

• Gather information about the incident, including its nature, scope, and potential impact
• Determine the severity of the incident and activate appropriate response procedures

Incident Team Assembly:

• Assemble a team of experts from various departments (e.g., IT, security, legal, public relations) to handle the incident
• Assign roles and responsibilities to team members

Communication:

• Communicate effectively with stakeholders, including senior management and consumers of the service
• Provide regular updates on the incident's status and actions being taken

Decision-Making:

• Make timely and informed decisions to contain the incident and minimize its impact
• Consider the potential consequences of different actions and choose the best course of action

Resource Allocation:

• Allocate resources (e.g., personnel, equipment, budget) as needed to address the incident
• Ensure that resources are used effectively and efficiently

Coordination:

• Coordinate the activities of various teams involved in the incident response
• Ensure that everyone is working towards a common goal

Post-Incident Analysis:

• Conduct a thorough review of the incident to identify root causes and lessons learned
• Develop recommendations for preventing similar incidents in the future

Knowledge Management:

• Captures and shares knowledge about incidents to prevent future occurrences
• Creates knowledge base articles and best practices

Continuous Improvement:

• Update incident response plans and procedures based on the findings of post-incident reviews

Required Skills: 

• At least 3 or more years’ practical experience of Incident Management Frameworks in methodologies like ITIL, COBIT or DevOps-style incident and problem management processes
• Knowledge of configuration management processes
• Experience with incident and problem management tools, including ServiceNow and monitoring tools such as Cloudwatch, and alerting tools like OpsGenie, PagerDuty or similar
• Experience with knowledge supporting tools including SharePoint, JIRA and Confluence or similar, with the ability to learn new skills quickly
• Data analysis and reporting skills, with experience in tools such as PowerBI an advantage
• Broad experience of modern IT infrastructure and applications
• Strong conflict resolution skills, to resolve disagreements efficiently without damaging relationships
• Analytical and critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and strong stress management, necessary for assessing a situation, making informed decisions, and handling the pressure of incidents
• Strong conflict resolution skills, to resolve disagreements efficiently without damaging relationships
• Experience in stakeholder management, with an ability to communicate across levels of an organisation
• Good understanding of the purpose and function of SLAs, to allow you to evaluate a team's performance and identify areas for improvement
• Proactive and adaptable to changing scenarios and requirements, and responsible and accountable for their actions and results
• Experience contributing to incident and problem management strategies, identifying opportunities for improvement