Senior Incident Response Engineer

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, Archer is a leader in the next-gen aerospace sector building an end-to-end advanced air mobility platform that delivers air taxis, unmanned aircraft systems (“UAS”), aviation-related physical artificial intelligence (“AI”) solutions, and other technologies to customers worldwide across the commercial aerospace and defense sectors.

Our sights are set high and our problems are hard, and we believe that diversity in the workplace is what makes us smarter, drives better insights, and will ultimately lift us all to success. We are dedicated to cultivating an equitable and inclusive environment that embraces our differences, and supports and celebrates all of our team members.

We are seeking a Senior Incident Response (IR) Engineer to lead Archer's detection and remediation efforts. You will serve as the primary technical liaison to our Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), translating alerts into actionable responses while ensuring compliance with NIST SP 800-171. This role requires deep expertise in digital forensics, threat hunting, and enterprise security operations across SIEM, SOAR, and security platforms to collaborate with infrastructure and security teams to rapidly contain threats and improve our security posture.

• Serve as Archer's primary internal SIEM engineer, working closely with internal resources and our MSSP for the triage & validation of alerts, defining escalation thresholds, and ensuring accurate tuning of security tools and detection rules.
• Lead the technical response to validated security incidents including identification, containment, eradication, and recovery, coordinating cross-functional response teams during breaches, malware outbreaks, and insider threats.
• Conduct deep-dive forensic investigations including memory analysis, disk imaging, timeline reconstruction, and evidence preservation, producing detailed incident reports for HR, legal, and regulatory stakeholders.
• Execute proactive threat hunts using SIEM data to identify lateral movement, persistence mechanisms, and indicators of compromise (IOCs).
• Develop, refine, and validate custom detection rules mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, considering Archer-specific threats and compliance-driven use cases.
• Design and maintain incident response playbooks and SOAR workflows to automate evidence collection, containment actions, and notification procedures.
• Design log collection requirements and facilitate external compliance audits to ensure adherence to NIST SP 800-171 Audit and Accountability (AU) requirements, CMMC Level 2 practices, and SOX ITGC expectations.
• Manage endpoint and system detection policies, deploy sensors, and perform live response actions to contain active threats and collect forensic artifacts during incidents.
• Identify and consume Archer-relevant cyber threat intelligence (CTI) feeds and operationalize IOCs and threat actor TTPs into detection logic.
• Own the IR documentation architecture: author, organize, and continuously maintain incident response procedures, playbooks, and runbooks to ensure consistency, clarity, and audit-readiness.
• Own and evolve Archer's IR program strategy, metrics, and roadmap, reporting progress and risk posture to the CISO and executive leadership.
• Provide technical guidance and tabletop exercise facilitation to IT, application, and leadership teams on incident reporting procedures, response protocols, and lessons learned from post-incident reviews.

• 5+ years in Incident Response or Security Operations (SOC), with proven experience managing MSSP relationships, alert triage, and SLA performance.
• Hands-on experience investigating security incidents from initial detection…