SOC Analyst - Lv2

Methods is a £100M+ IT Services Consultancy who has partnered with a range of central government departments and agencies to transform the way the public sector operates in the UK. Established over 30 years ago and UK-based, we apply our skills in transformation, delivery, and collaboration from across the Methods Group, to create end-to-end business and technical solutions that are people-centred, safe, and designed for the future.

As a Level 2 SOC Analyst, you are the senior technical responder within the secure operations team, responsible for owning security incidents end-to-end using the Microsoft security platform. You will act as the escalation point for Level 1 analysts and as the technical lead during active incidents, conducting deep investigations across Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, and Entra ID to validate threats, contain attackers, and coordinate remediation.

Key responsibilities:

• Incident investigation & response (primary focus)
• Act as an escalation point for all security alerts raised by Level 1 analysts.
• Validate incidents and determine severity, scope, root cause, and business impact.
• Lead technical investigations using Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, and Entra ID.
• Own incidents through identification, containment, eradication coordination, recovery validation, and post-incident review.
• Produce high-quality incident records including evidence, actions taken, root cause analysis, and lessons learned.
• Serve as technical incident lead during major security events.
• Provide accurate, timely updates to IT, security leadership, and affected teams.
• Contribute to operational reporting and participate in a business-hours operating model with an on-call rotation.
• Tune Sentinel analytics rules to reduce false positives and missed threats.
• Develop and maintain incident response runbooks and triage guides for Defender alerts.
• Provide informal technical leadership to Level 1 analysts through mentoring and coaching.

What success looks like:

• Incidents are accurately classified and contained quickly.
• Sentinel alert quality continuously improves.
• Stakeholders trust SOC technical judgement and communication.
• Level 1 analysts steadily increase investigation quality and independence.
• Playbooks and automation remain current and operationally useful.

Required experience & skills:

• 2+ years’ experience in a SOC or security operations role with ownership of complex investigations.
• Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, Defender for Identity, Defender for Cloud Apps, and Entra ID logs.
• Solid understanding of Windows internals, identity-based attacks, email threat techniques, and common attacker TTPs.
• Confident writing technical incident reports and stakeholder updates.

Working pattern:

• Monday to Friday, business hours.
• Participation in a rotating on-call schedule for evenings/weekends to support major security incidents.

By joining us you can expect:

• Autonomy to develop and grow your skills and experience.
• Be part of exciting project work that is making a difference in society.
• A supportive and collaborative environment.
• Access to LinkedIn Learning and training.
• 25 days of annual leave a year, plus bank holidays.
• 2 paid days per year to volunteer in our local communities.
• Private Medical Insurance and Life Assurance.