Senior Security Analyst (Contract) in Bristol

hackajob is collaborating with Made Tech to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role. Made Tech helps UK public sector organisations build and run secure, user-centred digital services. Our Cyber practice works directly with government departments, agencies, and other public bodies — embedding alongside client teams to raise their security capability, not just deliver a report and leave.

As a Senior Security Analyst, you'll be a core part of that practice, operating in a security operations context where the stakes are real: the systems we protect carry sensitive public data and underpin services that people depend on. You'll lead threat hunts and intrusion investigations, author and tune detection content, and help your team respond to incidents in a way that leaves things better than you found them. You'll translate threat intelligence into actionable detections, align your work to frameworks like the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework and GovAssure, and communicate clearly with client security stakeholders who need to understand what's happening and why it matters.

You'll help junior analysts develop their triage tradecraft, normalise pairing on incident response, contribute to shared detection standards across the practice, and model the kind of blameless, collaborative culture that makes a security team genuinely effective.

• Lead threat hunts and intrusion investigations — form and test hypotheses, map adversary activity against MITRE ATT&CK, perform forensic artefact analysis, and establish scope and root cause clearly enough that the team and client can act on your findings.
• Author, tune, and peer-review detection content - treat detections as code (version-controlled, reviewed), translate threat intelligence into new rules, and contribute to iterative improvement of the SIEM ruleset.
• Own sub-cycles of the intelligence lifecycle - run structured collection against defined requirements, track actor TTPs, manage indicator lifecycles, and produce situational-awareness products that inform both detection priorities and client risk decisions.
• Lead incident response and drive improvement - co-ordinate containment across engineering and analyst teams, communicate incident detail clearly to client stakeholders, and turn every incident into improved detection content, hardening, or runbook coverage.
• Align security operations to UK public sector standards - ensure investigations, evidence handling, and detection coverage reflect NCSC CAF Objective C, GovAssure requirements, and lawful-monitoring obligations; feed gaps back into risk governance.
• Mentor junior analysts and raise team standards - pair deliberately on complex investigations, review triage work, share adversary tradecraft with the team, and help create an environment where people feel safe raising concerns and learning from mistakes.
• Contribute to the practice beyond your immediate engagement - improve shared SOC standards and onboarding documentation, turn good solutions into reusable playbooks and accelerators the next team can pick up, contribute detection content to practice-level repositories, and engage with cross-government security communities such as NCSC CISP and relevant ISACs.

Hold one of the following - Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP), CompTIA Security+, or an equivalent foundational operational security credential expected of Senior SOC analysts.

Experience applying structured analytical techniques - ACH, key-assumptions checks, or similar, to produce rigorous, bias-resistant intelligence assessments, and comfort peer-reviewing others' analytic tradecraft.

Working knowledge of cloud security event investigation and cloud detection tuning, particularly across AWS, Azure, or GCP environments, including understanding of infrastructure-level telemetry.

Experience framing security findings in risk terms for non-technical stakeholders — communicating likelihood, impact, and recommended treatment clearly, and reflecting asset criticality and threat context in prioritisation decisions.

Evidence of building or improving SOAR playbooks, automated triage workflows, or equivalent automation that reduced analyst toil in a SOC or detection-engineering context.

Familiarity with UK government security frameworks — in particular the NCSC CAF, GovAssure, and HMG Security Policy Framework — and experience aligning detection or response work to those standards in a government or regulated environment.

Experience working within an agile or Kanban-based team model, contributing to workflow improvement, running or participating in retrospectives, and helping the team improve its own practices — not just delivering within them.

Experience acting as a trusted working-level contact for client security stakeholders — anchoring on their actual outcomes, raising concerns or opportunities proactively, and contributing subject-matter expertise to proposals or bids.

Hands-on experience with at least one major SIEM platform (for example, Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or Elastic Security) including writing and tuning detection rules.

Familiarity with threat intelligence platforms, OSINT tooling, or indicator lifecycle management in an operational context.

Job Benefits: An increasing number of our customers are specifying a minimum of SC (security check) clearance in order to work on their projects. Eligibility for SC requires 5 years' UK residency and 5 years' employment history (or back to full-time education).

If you need this job description in another format, or other support in applying, please email talent@madetech.

We’re committed to building a happy, inclusive and diverse workforce, where we talk about mental health, communities of practice and neurodiversity as well as our client work and best practice.

We’ve recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan.

• 30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave
• Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work
• Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options
• Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff
• Paid counselling - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice