Security Operations Lead in Accrington

Location: Accrington | Working Pattern: Hybrid, 3 days onsite | Salary: £70,000

Are you a Senior SOC Analyst, SOC Lead or Security Team Lead looking to take the next step into management without losing the technical elements you enjoy? This is a hands-on Security Operations Lead role, offering the opportunity to progress into a formal people management position while remaining deeply involved in threat detection, incident response and security operations. Approximately 70% of your time will remain technical, with the remaining focus on mentoring, coaching and developing a small SOC team. Working within a complex global environment spanning enterprise technology, cloud platforms, retail systems and operational technology, you'll play a key role in strengthening security operations, improving detection capability and helping shape the future direction of the SOC.

Why Join?

• A genuine step into management for an experienced senior security professional.
• Remain hands-on with security operations, threat detection and incident response.
• Lead and develop a growing internal SOC team.
• Influence security operations strategy across a large-scale, complex environment.
• Drive improvements across detection engineering, automation and operational resilience.
• Work across enterprise, cloud and OT security environments.

The Role

• Lead, mentor and develop a small SOC team, supporting both technical and professional growth.
• Act as the senior escalation point for security incidents, investigations and operational decisions.
• Conduct threat hunting, incident response and complex security investigations.
• Oversee security monitoring across enterprise, cloud and operational technology environments.
• Improve detection use cases, alert quality and SOC operating procedures.
• Drive automation initiatives through SOAR and security tooling.
• Develop SOC playbooks, reporting, metrics and operational processes.
• Collaborate with wider security, infrastructure and technology teams to reduce organisational risk.
• Participate in on-call activities and provide leadership during major security incidents.

What We're Looking For

• Experience in a SOC Lead, Senior SOC Analyst, Senior Security Analyst, Security Team Lead or Security Operations Manager role.
• Strong technical background in threat detection, incident response, security monitoring and investigation.
• Experience mentoring, coaching or providing day-to-day guidance to security professionals.
• Previous responsibility for leading investigations, acting as an escalation point or coordinating operational activity.
• Comfortable remaining highly technical while taking on greater leadership responsibility.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills.
• Passion for building and improving security operations capabilities.

Technical Experience

• SIEM platforms and security monitoring technologies.
• Incident response, threat hunting and detection engineering.
• Cloud security across Azure, AWS or hybrid environments.
• SOAR platforms, security automation and workflow optimisation.
• Vulnerability management and security operations best practice.
• Enterprise and operational technology security environments.

Desirable Experience

• CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional).
• CISM (Certified Information Security Manager).
• GCIA, GCIH, GSEC or other relevant SANS certifications.
• CCSP, Azure Security Engineer, AWS Security Specialty or similar cloud security certifications.
• Experience helping build, mature or transform SOC capability.

Key Details

• Salary: £70,000
• Location: Accrington, Shirebrook or London
• Working Pattern: Hybrid, 3 days onsite per week
• Eligibility: Right to work in the UK required

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Our Client are an equal opportunities employer. Right to work in the UK is required for this role.