Head of ISOC

Head of ISOC – Manchester - £80k + Bonus

Pearson Carter are currently working with a leading UK Managed Service Provider who are looking to appoint a senior operations leader to head up their Integrated Network & Security Operations Centre (ISOC).

This is a pivotal leadership role for someone who understands how large-scale networks, managed services, and 24/7 operations function in practice — and how security is embedded into resilient service delivery. This role would suit a network-first operational leader with strong security knowledge, rather than a purely cyber-focused profile.

Get in touch if you’re looking for your next leadership opportunity.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop 24/7 NOC and SOC teams responsible for service monitoring and incident response
• Own day-to-day operational performance across network and security services
• Develop, implement, and maintain operational processes, runbooks, and escalation procedures
• Ensure network performance, availability, and fault resolution remain industry-leading
• Embed security operations into core service resilience
• Act as senior incident commander during major outages or security events
• Drive operational maturity through tooling, automation, and process optimisation
• Align ISOC strategy with wider platform and product teams
• Oversee service KPIs including uptime, SLAs, MTTD, MTTR, and incident recurrence
• Lead post-incident reviews focused on learning and prevention
• Manage vendors, tooling roadmap, and operational budgets
• Provide meaningful operational reporting to senior leadership and customers

Experience:

• 8–10 years’ experience in network, infrastructure, or service operations
• Minimum 5 years in a senior operational leadership role
• Proven experience leading NOC teams (ideally alongside SOC functions)
• Strong background in routing, switching, firewalls, VPNs, and load balancers (Fortinet, Juniper, Cisco, Aruba, Check Point)
• Enterprise and cloud networking experience, particularly Microsoft Azure
• Strong incident and crisis management capability
• Good working knowledge of SOC tooling (SIEM, EDR, IDS/IPS)
• Experience working within a Managed Service Provider environment

Qualifications (Desirable)

• Degree in Computer Science, Networking, IT or similar
• ITIL v4 Practitioner
• Certifications such as CCNP, CISSP, CISM (or equivalent experience)

Salary & Benefits

• 33 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays), increasing with service
• Annual pay reviews
• Holiday buy scheme
• All-company bonus scheme
• Strong focus on personal and professional development

Location

Client has an office based near Manchester. This is a hybrid role 3x a week in office

How to Apply

Please apply ASAP with your CV to be considered for this position.

You can also get in touch with me on harry.b@pearsoncarter.com or 0191 406 6111.

Pearson Carter is the Global Leader in Microsoft Technology, Web, Mobile and Software Development Recruitment with specialist roles across the globe – www.pearsoncarter.com