Security Operations Technical Lead in Manchester

To support the Head of Security Operations in delivering effective day-to-day security operations, ensuring AJ Bell maintains the appropriate capability to detect, investigate and respond to security events and incidents. The Security Operations Technical Lead is responsible for ensuring that security operations activities are executed efficiently, consistently and in line with defined SLAs and operational standards, through hands-on technical leadership across SOC, Incident Response, Threat Intelligence, Insider Risk and Vulnerability Management. This role acts as a senior technical escalation point, supporting complex investigations and driving improvements in detection, response, automation and operational processes. The role holder is expected to lead through expertise, supporting analysts and ensuring Security Operations operates with discipline, quality and continuous improvement.

The key responsibilities of the role are:

• Act as the primary technical escalation point for security events and incidents identified by the Security Operations team.
• Support the Head of Security Operations in ensuring AJ Bell has the appropriate capability to detect and respond to security events and incidents.
• Oversee the day-to-day execution of security operations, ensuring alerts and incidents are handled in line with defined processes and SLAs.
• Ensure security operations SLAs and OLAs are met, including alert triage, escalation and incident response timelines, highlighting and addressing risks where required.
• Ensure adherence to our KRI and KPI’s and any variation in these are raised to the Head of Security Operations.
• Provide hands-on support in the investigation and response to security incidents, including endpoint, identity, network, cloud and insider-related threats.
• Ensure consistent execution and continuous improvement of incident response playbooks and operational runbooks, validating them through real incidents and simulations.
• Support the optimisation and tuning of security monitoring and detection capabilities, including SIEM and endpoint tooling, to improve signal quality and reduce false positives.
• Support the execution of the end-to-end vulnerability management process, including validation of findings and tracking remediation activities.
• Work closely with MSSP and security vendors to ensure effective delivery of security operations services.
• Challenge and validate vendor outputs, driving operational efficiency, quality improvements and better use of tooling capabilities.
• Actively design and implement automation and orchestration to reduce manual effort, repetitive or high-volume tasks, improve response times and increase consistency across security operations processes.
• Work with the Security Engineering team to ensure tooling, logging and detection gaps are identified and addressed.
• Support the effective operation of 24x7 security monitoring, including coordination with third-party providers.
• Contribute to the development and delivery of operational MI and reporting, ensuring accuracy and insight into security trends and performance.
• Maintain visibility of security incidents, trends and operational risks, escalating issues where required.

Technical Skills:

• Strong hands-on experience of Security Operations tools and capabilities, including SIEM and SOAR platforms (e.g. Sentinel, ServiceNow, Splunk SOAR, Cortex), Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR/XDR).
• Strong hands-on experience of Threat Intelligence platforms (e.g. Recorded Future, Doppel, ZeroFox, Google Threat Intelligence), Vulnerability management solutions (e.g. Tenable, Rapid7), and Insider Risk and DLP tools (e.g. Purview, Netskope).
• Strong hands-on experience with Network security solutions like Next Gen Firewalls, Network Anomaly, WAF & DDoS solutions.
• Experience of leading and responding to Cyber Incident Response aligned to NIST.
• Knowledge of threat detection techniques and use case development.
• Experience of applying threat intelligence in an operational context.
• Strong experience with vulnerability management tools and processes.
• Strong awareness of cloud services and supporting security controls and monitoring capabilities.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft security stack (Defender, Sentinel, Purview), Active Directory and Azure AD, Windows and Linux environments.
• Experience with data loss prevention and insider risk tooling advantageous.
• Hands-on experience with automation and scripting (e.g. PowerShell, Python) highly desirable.

Competence:

• Experience working within recognised Information Security frameworks and best practices such as ISO27001, NIST, MITRE ATT&CK.
• Knowledge of relevant regulatory requirements (e.g. GDPR, FCA/PRA).
• Experience in an Information Security role gained in a financial services environment preferred.
• Experience working in a Security Operations role for a minimum of 7 years and operating within a Lead / Senior Analyst role for at least 3 years.

Knowledge & Skills:

• Strong analytical and investigative capability.
• Ability to work under pressure and manage multiple concurrent incidents and priorities.
• Strong ownership of tasks, attention to detail and follow-through to conclusion.
• Ability to provide technical leadership without formal line management responsibility.
• Ability to challenge approach, tooling and processes to improve operational effectiveness.
• Structured, self-starting and able to work under own initiative.
• Effective communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Ability to plan, organise and deliver tasks with minimal supervision.
• Collaborative approach to working with analysts, engineering teams and external partners.
• Strong focus on quality, consistency and continuous improvement.