The Role
Lead and develop Critical Incident Response Team squads supporting managed detection and response customers. Manage staffing, coverage, prioritization, service levels, quality, and operational readiness across concurrent engagements. Act as Incident Commander and senior escalation point for complex incidents, directing investigation, containment, eradication, recovery, and communications. Use metrics and customer feedback to improve processes, playbooks, training, automation, and service delivery while partnering with security and product teams.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Us
Sophos is a cybersecurity leader defending 600,000 organizations globally with an AI-driven platform and expert-led services. Sophos meets organizations wherever they are in their security maturity and grows with them to defeat cyberattacks. Its solutions combine machine learning, automation, and real-time threat intelligence with frontline human expertise from Sophos X-Ops to deliver advanced, 24/7 threat monitoring, detection, and response.
Sophos offers industry-leading managed detection and response (MDR) alongside a comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity technologies — including endpoint, network, email, and cloud security, extended detection and response (XDR), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), and next-gen SIEM. Together with expert advisory services, these capabilities help organizations proactively reduce risk and respond faster, with the visibility and scalability needed to stay ahead of evolving threats.
Sophos goes to market with a global partner ecosystem, including Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), resellers and distributors, marketplace integrations, and cyber risk partners, giving organizations the flexibility to choose trusted relationships when securing their business. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.
Sophos is seeking an experienced and motivated Incident Response Manager to lead the Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) supporting its Managed Detection and Response (MDR) customers. The successful candidate will be responsible for the people leadership and operational management of the CIRT, ensuring consistent, high-quality execution across active cyber security incidents and customer engagements.
As an Incident Response Manager, you will lead and develop squads of analysts across CIRT while remaining technically engaged as a senior escalation point for complex and high-severity incidents. You will balance people leadership with incident response operations, including operational readiness, incident command, customer communication, and continuous improvement, to build a resilient, scalable, and customer-focused CIRT capability.
What you will do
- Lead and develop squads of analysts across CIRT; set clear expectations, provide coaching and feedback, support career development, and build an inclusive, high-performing team culture.
- Own day-to-day CIRT operations across multiple squads, ensuring appropriate staffing, coverage, workload balancing, prioritization, and service-level performance for concurrent customer engagements.
- Provide senior technical leadership and act as Incident Commander for complex or high-severity engagements, coordinating investigation, containment, eradication, recovery, and customer communications through to resolution.
- Establish and maintain operational and investigative quality standards, ensuring teams follow approved processes and playbooks and that engagement documentation, case reviews, and post-incident actions are complete and accurate.
- Use engagement, quality, response-time, capacity, and customer-outcome metrics to identify trends, manage performance, inform resource planning, and drive measurable improvements across the function.
- Build operational readiness by maintaining skills coverage, onboarding and training plans, incident exercises, tooling needs, and playbook updates for a fast-changing threat landscape.
- Serve as a senior escalation point for customer concerns, material findings, delivery risks, and resource conflicts, translating complex technical issues into clear updates and actionable decisions for technical and executive stakeholders.
- Partner cross-functionally with Threat Intelligence, the Security Operations Center, Detection Engineering, Product, and other teams to close detection and response gaps and strengthen MDR’s overall response capability.
- Drive continuous improvement and standardization by turning incident lessons, analyst feedback, and operational data into improved workflows, automation opportunities, training, and service enhancements.
What will you bring
- 7+ years of experience in cybersecurity operations, incident response, digital forensics, or a related discipline, including at least 2 years leading people, teams, or operational functions.
- Demonstrated experience managing incident response operations across multiple concurrent engagements, with responsibility for staffing, prioritization, service-level expectations, and customer outcomes.
- Strong technical background in endpoint, network, and cloud security, with proven ability to investigate indicators of compromise, determine scope and root cause, and direct containment, eradication, and remediation efforts.
- Experience serving as an Incident Commander or senior technical escalation point during high-pressure incidents, with the judgment to make timely risk-based decisions and communicate clearly with technical and executive stakeholders.
- Proven people-leadership experience, including coaching, performance management, career development, hiring or onboarding, and building effective teams through constructive feedback and accountability.
- Experience using operational metrics, quality reviews, and customer feedback to identify performance or process gaps and deliver practical improvements in a security operations or managed services environment.
- Deep understanding of attacker tools, tactics, and procedures, including persistence, lateral movement, credential theft, ransomware, and defense evasion; working knowledge of the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, strong analytical and troubleshooting ability, and a degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field; or relevant, commensurate work experience.
- Advanced cybersecurity certifications preferred (e.g., GCFE, GCFA, GCIH, CISSP, or similar).
- Experience leading distributed, global, or 24x7 incident response or security operations teams, including participation in an on-call or leadership escalation rotation.
- Experience with SIEM, EDR, forensic collection, and threat intelligence platforms, together with practical use of OSQuery, SQL, PowerShell, KQL, CyLR, Velociraptor, or comparable tools.
- Experience developing incident response playbooks, training programs, tabletop exercises, or other readiness and capability-building initiatives.
- Natural curiosity, adaptability, and a passion for continuous learning, service improvement, and developing the next generation of incident response professionals.
Essential:
Desired:
#LI-Remote
#B2
Ready to Join Us?
At Sophos, we believe in the power of diverse perspectives to fuel innovation. Research shows that candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don't check every box in a job description. We challenge that notion. Your unique experiences and skills might be exactly what we need to enhance our team. Don't let a checklist hold you back – we encourage you to apply.
What's Great About Sophos?
· Sophos operates a remote-first working model, making remote work the primary option for most employees. However, some roles may necessitate a hybrid approach. While we are a remote first organization, applicants must have legal authorization to work in the jurisdiction where the position is posted, without requiring employer sponsorship.
· Our people – we innovate and create, all of which are accompanied by a great sense of fun and team spirit
· Employee-led diversity and inclusion networks that build community and provide education and advocacy
· Annual charity and fundraising initiatives and volunteer days for employees to support local communities
· Global employee sustainability initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint
· Global fitness and trivia competitions to keep our bodies and minds sharp
· Global wellbeing days for employees to relax and recharge
· Monthly wellbeing webinars and training to support employee health and wellbeing
Our Commitment To You
We’re proud of the diverse and inclusive environment we have at Sophos, and we’re committed to ensuring equality of opportunity. We believe that diversity, combined with excellence, builds a better Sophos, so we encourage applicants who can contribute to the diversity of our team. All applicants will be treated in a fair and equal manner and in accordance with the law regardless of gender, sex, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, color, age, military veteran status, disability, pregnancy, maternity or sexual orientation. We want to give you every opportunity to show us your best self, so if there are any adjustments we could make to the recruitment and selection process to support you, please let us know.
Data Protection
If you choose to explore an opportunity, and subsequently share your CV or other personal details with Sophos, these details will be held by Sophos for 12 months in accordance with our Privacy Policy and used by our recruitment team to contact you regarding this or other relevant opportunities at Sophos. If you would like Sophos to delete or update your details at any time, please follow the steps set out in the Privacy Policy describing your individual rights. For more information on Sophos’ data protection practices, please consult our Privacy Policy Cybersecurity as a Service Delivered | Sophos
Skills Required
- 7+ years of experience in cybersecurity operations, incident response, digital forensics, or a related discipline
- At least 2 years leading people, teams, or operational functions
- Experience managing incident response operations across multiple concurrent engagements
- Experience with staffing, prioritization, service-level expectations, and customer outcomes
- Strong technical background in endpoint, network, and cloud security
- Ability to investigate indicators of compromise, determine scope and root cause, and direct containment, eradication, and remediation
- Experience serving as an Incident Commander or senior technical escalation point during high-pressure incidents
- Experience communicating with technical and executive stakeholders
- People-leadership experience including coaching, performance management, career development, hiring or onboarding, and team building
- Experience using operational metrics, quality reviews, and customer feedback to identify gaps and deliver improvements
- Deep understanding of attacker tools, tactics, and procedures, including persistence, lateral movement, credential theft, ransomware, and defense evasion
- Working knowledge of the MITRE ATT&CK framework
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Strong analytical and troubleshooting ability
- Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field, or relevant commensurate work experience
- Advanced cybersecurity certifications such as GCFE, GCFA, GCIH, CISSP, or similar
- Experience leading distributed, global, or 24x7 incident response or security operations teams
- Experience participating in an on-call or leadership escalation rotation
- Experience with SIEM, EDR, forensic collection, and threat intelligence platforms
- Practical experience with OSQuery, SQL, PowerShell, KQL, CyLR, Velociraptor, or comparable tools
- Experience developing incident response playbooks, training programs, tabletop exercises, or readiness initiatives
Sophos Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Sophos and has not been reviewed or approved by Sophos.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time away is positioned as broad, with company-wide wellness days plus dedicated learning days and paid volunteer time.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-related leave appears more comprehensive than baseline offerings, including paid parental leave, caregiver leave, and extended bereavement leave.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Wellbeing support is emphasized through always-available assistance resources and a Calm subscription, suggesting a lifestyle-oriented benefits approach.
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The Company
What We Do
Cybersecurity Evolved. As a worldwide leader in next-generation cybersecurity, Sophos protects nearly 400,000 organizations of all sizes in more than 150 countries from today’s most advanced cyberthreats. Powered by SophosLabs – a global threat intelligence and data science team – Sophos’ cloud-native and AI-enhanced solutions secure endpoints (laptops, servers and mobile devices) and networks against evolving cybercriminal tactics and techniques, including automated and active-adversary breaches, ransomware, malware, exploits, data exfiltration, phishing, and more.
