SOC Manager - 6 month contract - remote in the UK

Audit & Risk Recruitment is working exclusively with a prestigious public sector organisation to appoint a senior cyber security leader on an initial 6-month contract. This is a critical, high-visibility role sitting at the intersection of technical operations and executive stakeholder management, offering the opportunity to shape cyber security strategy at a national level.

The role

You will define and lead delivery of the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), owning real-time incident detection, response and remediation across a complex, high-value estate. Key accountabilities include:

• Owning the cyber incident response plan — its development, communication and continuous improvement
• Defining the use-case-driven logging, monitoring and response capability to ensure resilience against cyber threats
• Identifying vulnerabilities across the estate and defining remediation and mitigation processes to ensure cyber readiness
• Providing strategic-level advice to senior management and managing relationships with external agencies including government bodies
• Defining the cyber security operations strategy in alignment with threat posture, government direction and senior business stakeholders
• Planning required levels of cyber investment including governance, tooling and staffing within the CSOC

Essential skills & experience

• Proven experience managing Security Event Monitoring operations — SIEM/SOAR, antivirus, network and host IDS/IPS
• Strong working knowledge of NCSC incident response processes, GDPR, NIS regulations and MITRE ATT&CK
• Experience in threat monitoring, intelligence gathering and assessment, and vulnerability scanning and mitigation
• Senior-level incident response management and network traffic analysis capability
• ITIL knowledge and experience operating within or alongside public sector / government security frameworks