The Incident Response Engineer Journeyman is a mid-level cybersecurity professional responsible for detecting, investigating, and remediating security incidents affecting mission-critical systems in a highly regulated government environment. This role analyzes security alerts, leads triage activities, and coordinates containment and recovery actions with operations, IT, and mission stakeholders. The engineer also contributes to threat hunting, maintains incident response playbooks and tooling, and produces clear reports and metrics to drive continuous improvement of security operations.
Key Responsibilities- Perform initial detection, triage, and validation of security events from SIEM, endpoint, network, and cloud security tools to distinguish true incidents from false positives and prioritize response.
- Lead or support containment, eradication, and recovery efforts for cybersecurity incidents, coordinating with system owners and operations teams to minimize impact on mission-critical systems.
- Conduct host and network forensics, log analysis, and malware analysis to determine root cause, attack path, and data exposure, preserving evidence as needed.
- Maintain and enhance incident response runbooks, playbooks, and standard operating procedures that align with organizational policies, regulatory frameworks, and evolving threat landscapes.
- Participate in proactive threat hunting using security telemetry, threat intelligence, and behavioral analytics to identify stealthy or emerging threats in enterprise networks.
- Configure, tune, and maintain incident response tooling and SIEM rules to improve detection fidelity, reduce noise, and enhance visibility across regulated environments.
- Produce clear incident reports, metrics, and post-incident reviews documenting timeline, impact, corrective actions, and recommendations for control improvements.
- Collaborate with security training and awareness functions to support tabletop exercises, incident simulations, and communications that reinforce response readiness.
Required Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Computer Science, or related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
- Typically 5-7 years of experience in security operations and incident response with hands-on exposure to forensics and SIEM in government or similarly regulated environments.
- Demonstrated experience triaging security alerts, conducting incident investigations, and supporting containment and recovery activities.
- Hands-on experience with SIEM platforms and endpoint or network security tools used for incident detection and response.
- Proven ability to perform log analysis, basic malware analysis, and evidence preservation to support reporting and potential regulatory needs.
- Active TS/SCI security clearance
- U.S. citizenship, as required to support a federal IT environment.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience with leading SIEM and incident response tools such as Splunk, Elastic, QRadar, or similar platforms.
- Industry certifications such as GCIA, GCFA, GCIH, or equivalent incident response/forensics credentials.
- Experience handling data spills or incidents involving sensitive or classified information under formal response frameworks.
- Background participating in threat hunting operations and developing or refining incident response playbooks.
Compensation RangesCompensation ranges for ASM Research positions vary depending on multiple factors; including but not limited to, location, skill set, level of education, certifications, client requirements, contract-specific affordability, government clearance and investigation level, and years of experience. The compensation displayed for this role is a general guideline based on these factors and is unique to each role. Monetary compensation is one component of ASM's overall compensation and benefits package for employees.
EEO RequirementsIt is the policy of ASM that an individual's race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation or national origin are not and will not be considered in any personnel or management decisions. We affirm our commitment to these fundamental policies.
All recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting for all job classifications is done without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, or age. All decisions on employment are made to abide by the principle of equal employment.
Physical Requirements
The physical requirements described in "Knowledge, Skills and Abilities" above are representative of those which must be met by an employee to successfully perform the primary functions of this job. (For example, "light office duties' or "lifting up to 50 pounds" or "some travel" required.) Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with qualifying disabilities, who are otherwise qualified, to perform the primary functions.
DisclaimerThe preceding job description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job.
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