Cyber Defense Operations Lead

Job Description

Cyber Defense Operations Lead

Choosing where to start and grow your career has a major impact on your professional and personal life, so it’s equally important you know that the company you choose to work at, and its leaders, will support and guide you. With a variety of people, global locations, technologies, and products, 3M is a place where you can collaborate with other curious, creative 3

Mers.

Leads, matures, and transforms the Cyber Defense Operations (CDO) function. Drives CDO strategy execution, security monitoring, incident response coordination, detection engineering, Sec Ops platform operations, MSSP oversight, operational reporting, leadership development, and the innovation roadmap for security monitoring and incident response. As a Cyber Defense Operations Lead, You Will Have The Opportunity To Tap Into Your Curiosity And Collaborate With Some Of The Most Innovative People Around The World.

Here, You Will Make An Impact By

• Lead the CDO function and establish clear roles, responsibilities, decision rights, escalation paths, service expectations, and operating rhythms.
• Oversee monitoring, incident response coordination, detection engineering, Sec Ops platform operations, and MSSP performance.
• Owns the CDO transformation roadmap from current-state operations to a data-driven, automation-enabled, agentic-ready capabilities.
• Represent CDO requirements in Sec Ops roadmap decisions, including telemetry quality, case management, reporting, cost management, automation, AI enablement, and future agentic workflows.
• Partner with IT, cloud, identity, endpoint, legal, privacy, corporate security, enterprise risk, Attack Surface Management, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Digital Investigations, data, and architecture teams.
• Coach managers and team members while building a calm, professional, accountable, documented, and innovation-ready culture.

To set you up for success in this role from day one, 3M requires (at a minimum) the following qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, or technology field (completed and verified prior to start)
• Fifteen (15) years of experience in cyber security in a private, public, government or military environment

Additional qualifications that could help you succeed even further in this role include:

• Proven leadership experience in Security Operations, Cyber Defense, Detection Engineering, Incident Response, or related cyber operations functions.
• Demonstrated ability to mature and transform an operational cyber defense function.
• Strong understanding of SIEM/Sec Ops platforms, SOAR, alert management, detection lifecycle management, case management, and incident response workflows.
• Experience with cloud security telemetry across AWS, GCP, and/or Azure.
• Ability to define and improve cyber data quality, ingestion priorities, normalization, routing, retention, and cost management.
• Experience managing MSSPs, security vendors, and cross-functional delivery partners.
• Ability to build roadmaps, execution plans, milestones, metrics, risks, and decision-ready materials.
• Strong written and verbal executive communication skills.
• Proven ability to lead teams calmly under pressure, delegate effectively, document decisions, and build repeatable operating processes.
• Practical understanding of automation, AI-enabled security operations, and the foundational data and workflow requirements needed to support future agentic SOC capabilities