At DEFEND, our dream is to improve everyday life by creating a cyber resilient world. We’re looking for an Incident Response Lead to lead organisations through their most critical cyber moments. You will coordinate major incident response engagements, proactively hunt for threats that evade existing controls, and conduct compromise assessments that surface hidden intrusion before it escalates. This role is both a frontline leader during active incidents and a recognised subject matter expert for customers and DEFEND colleagues alike. You will be trusted to lead complex investigations end to end, drive recovery with clarity and precision, and strengthen cyber resilience in the face of evolving threats.
In this role you'll...
- Take the lead when it matters, coordinating major cyber incidents from initial investigation through containment and secure recovery.
- Get hands-on with complex investigations, working through forensic evidence to understand what happened, how far an attacker got, and what needs to happen next.
- Hunt for what others have missed, using threat intelligence and adversary behaviour to uncover threats that have bypassed existing controls.
- Lead compromise assessments and threat hunting to identify signs of current or historic intrusion and help customers understand their exposure and risk.
- Turn technical findings into clear advice, giving technical teams and executives the confidence to make decisions during high-pressure situations.
- Help build a stronger response capability, mentoring others and improving the playbooks, processes and approaches we use across incident response and threat hunting.
Requirements
- Proven experience leading and coordinating complex incident response engagements across customer environments.
- Strong hands-on digital forensics and investigative skills across endpoint, network and cloud environments.
- Sound working knowledge of incident response frameworks and methodologies such as NIST and SANS, and the judgement to apply them while an incident is live.
- Strong threat hunting skills, able to form and test hypotheses, read adversary behaviour, and uncover threats that bypass preventative controls.
- Experience using threat intelligence to inform investigations, hunts, and assessments, and to anticipate how adversaries are likely to operate.
- Skilled at identifying control gaps and failures exposed by an incident and translating them into concrete recommendations that strengthen the organisation’s defences.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, able to produce clear reports and brief both technical teams and executive stakeholders during and after an incident.
- Confident engaging stakeholders across technical and business teams, acting as a steady and trusted point of advice when an organisation is under active threat.
- Able to manage competing priorities and live incidents at once while keeping deliverables accurate and working to deadlines.
- A genuine focus on continuous improvement, refining documentation, processes, and detections based on what each engagement teaches.
- Strong leadership and collaboration skills, with a commitment to mentoring others, sharing knowledge, and lifting the capability of the team.
- Willingness to assist in other adjacent practices where time permits.
Benefits
About DEFEND:
Our dream at DEFEND is to improve everyday life by creating a cyber resilient world. Over the last few years, we've experienced phenomenal growth and winning several industry awards, including Microsoft's Global Partner of the Year for 2025!
Why DEFEND?
We believe in investing in our employees’ growth and providing them with opportunities to advance their skills and careers. We offer a collaborative workplace culture, and we are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where innovative thinking is encouraged.
By joining our innovative and creative team you will have the opportunity to contribute a variety of cybersecurity outcomes, from culture & awareness of cyber resilience, through to offensive & defensive security. No matter what your role, everyone at DEFEND contributes towards our dream of creating a cyber resilient world.
The benefits of working at DEFEND
In addition to working for a growing, dynamic NZ company, DEFEND offers the following benefits to all our DEFENDers
- 3.5% Kiwisaver on top of your base salary
- Southern Cross Health Insurance coverage
- Mobile and Broadband discounts for yourself and family
- Flexible, hybrid work environment
- An allowance to contribute to your home office setup
- Access to EAP services to support you across a range of wellbeing needs
Diversity & Inclusion:
At DEFEND, we celebrate a variety of perspectives and experiences. We know from experience that people from underrepresented groups often don’t apply for roles they don’t feel they meet all the criteria for. We’re committed to creating an environment that enables all our team to thrive. If you think you have what it takes, but don’t check every single box, please consider applying. We’d love to hear how you might contribute to the team and being our next DEFENDer.
Ready to help build a more cyber resilient future with DEFEND? Apply now or learn more at: https://defend.co.nz/careers/
Skills Required
- Proven experience leading and coordinating complex incident response engagements across customer environments
- Strong hands-on digital forensics and investigative skills across endpoint, network, and cloud environments
- Working knowledge of incident response frameworks and methodologies such as NIST and SANS
- Strong threat hunting skills, including hypothesis development, adversary behavior analysis, and threat discovery
- Experience using threat intelligence in investigations, threat hunts, and compromise assessments
- Ability to identify incident-related control gaps and translate findings into defensive recommendations
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical reports and executive briefings
- Ability to engage confidently with technical and business stakeholders during active threats
- Ability to manage competing priorities and live incidents while meeting deadlines
- Commitment to continuous improvement of documentation, processes, and detections
- Strong leadership and collaboration skills, including mentoring and knowledge sharing
- Willingness to assist in adjacent practices when time permits
What We Do
DEFEND are an independent agnostic cyber security partner. Security practice leading capability in: - Auditing and Compliance (NIST Framework) - Business C-Level/Board consultancy (Virtual CISO) - Cloud/Data Centre Connect - Service Provider independent compliance - Network (WAN/LAN/Wi-Fi/Telco) - Application performance & secure coding - End point and End User protection - Threat Education & Intelligence - BCP & DR DEFEND develop and provide managed cyber security outsourcing & consulting services across industry verticals. DEFEND support and assist customers to ensure they have access to the best people, process and technology to mitigate and reduce business risk from Cyber-attacks. DEFEND are a specialist threat protection, intelligence and detection company providing services across ANZ . DEFEND are heavily focus on end user centric threat management solutions. DEFEND provide guidance and leadership within your disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity planning (BCP). We provide an aggregated security procurement management service to ensure our customer obtain the most effective access to services, solutions and pricing. Our objective is to attract only the most credible and capable people to join our team. We ensure our customers have a safe pair hands to call upon proactively and reactively in their time of need. If you want to join DEFEND or would allow us the privilege to become your partner then please contact us.
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