Incident Response Specialist

Time Type:
Full time

Worker Type:
Employee

Title:

Incident Response Specialist

The purpose of this role is to lead and coordinate the organization's response to cybersecurity incidents through proactive and reactive security operations. This role conducts advanced analysis of cyber threats, investigates security events, performs threat hunting and forensic analysis, and provides effective technical responses to cybersecurity incidents to protect the organization against evolving threats. The position also serves as a trusted advisor on incident response capabilities, cybersecurity risk management, and continuous improvement initiatives that strengthen organizational resilience

Location:

Madison, WI United states

Work Arrangement:
This role is hybrid, requiring 3 days/week in our Madison, WI office

The salary range for this role is between $93,000-$135,000

• Lead and coordinate the response to cybersecurity incidents including detection, analysis, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident activities.
• Conduct detailed investigations of security events and incidents to determine root cause, scope, impact, and remediation requirements.
• Monitor, analyze, and triage security alerts from multiple security platforms to identify malicious activity and elevate incidents appropriately.
• Communicate incident status, risks, and remediation recommendations effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including leadership teams.
• Perform threat hunting and forensic analysis activities to identify adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), indicators of compromise (IOCs), and potential security gaps.
• Develop, maintain, and execute incident response playbooks, procedures, and runbooks aligned with industry frameworks and best practices.
• Coordinate cross-functional response activities with internal teams, third-party vendors, managed service providers, and business stakeholders during cybersecurity incidents.
• Leverage threat intelligence sources and partner intelligence feeds to enrich investigations, identify emerging threats, and improve detection and response capabilities.
• Collect, analyze, and document incident data, trends, and metrics to support continuous improvement of security controls, processes, and detection capabilities.
• Assist in the development, testing, and maintenance of the Cybersecurity Incident Management Plan and cyber crisis response capabilities.
• Support the implementation of defense-in-depth strategies and security controls to reduce organizational risk and improve detection and response effectiveness.
• Identify and assess cybersecurity risks within assigned areas of responsibility, act as a subject matter expert, and provide risk-based recommendations to support informed decision-making.

• Tertiary Degree or equivalent combination of education and work experience.

• Relevant cybersecurity certifications such as GCIH, GCFA, GCFE, CISSP, CySA+, Security+, or equivalent.

• Experience in cybersecurity, incident response, security operations, digital forensics, threat hunting, or a related information security discipline.
• Experience investigating and responding to cybersecurity incidents across enterprise environments.
• Experience working within Security Operations Center (SOC) environments and incident response processes.
• Experience using SIEM, EDR/XDR, forensic, and threat intelligence platforms to investigate and respond to security incidents.
• Experience conducting root cause analysis, digital forensic investigations, malware analysis, or threat hunting activities.
• Familiarity with security monitoring, alert triage, incident analysis, and incident documentation…