Senior Incident Response and Operations Lead

The Cloud & AI organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise service companies in the world.

Microsoft’s Cloud & AI organization is dedicated to securing digital platforms, devices, and cloud environments across regulated industries. We protect our internal estate and empower customers to operate securely in complex, multi-cloud environments. Our mission is grounded in innovation, collaboration, and a growth mindset, creating life-changing technologies that impact billions globally.

We are seeking a Senior Incident Response and Operations Lead to join our team. This role is central to Microsoft’s security posture, with a primary focus on leading incident response efforts and building a unified, cross-organizational incident response framework across critical domains such as Healthcare, Legal, and Human Resources.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities

• Lead Major Security Incidents - Act as the primary incident commander for high-impact security events. Coordinate containment, eradication, and recovery efforts across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Develop Unified Response Frameworks - Architect and implement a cohesive incident response plan that spans multiple regulated domains. Align processes, escalation paths, and communication protocols across Healthcare, Legal, and HR systems.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration - Partner with stakeholders across engineering, compliance, legal, and HR to ensure consistent incident response standards, shared accountability, and effective governance.
• Automation & Process Optimization - Streamline incident response workflows through automation and integration with monitoring and alerting platforms. Focus on reducing detection and response times.
• Threat Modeling & Preparedness - Partner with threat modeling teams to identify potential abuse scenarios. Establish logging and telemetry standards to support rapid detection and investigation.
• Compliance & Audit Readiness - Ensure incident response processes meet regulatory requirements (e.g., PCI, HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR). Lead tabletop exercises and maintain audit-ready documentation.
• Knowledge Sharing & Enablement – Create and maintain playbooks, runbooks, and training materials. Mentor engineers and business stakeholders on security standards and post-incident analysis

Embody our Culture and Values 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science or related field OR 5+ years of experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, modeling, cyber security, anomaly detection, Security Operations Center (SOC) detection, threat analytics, security incident and event management (SIEM), information technology (IT), and operations incident response.
• 5+ years of  Extensive Incident Response Experience
• 5+ years of experience in Security Engineering, with demonstrated proficiency in security architecture, threat detection, and automation.

Other Requirements:

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: 

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. 
• Citizenship Verification: This role will require access to information that is controlled for export under export control regulations, potentially under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or Export Administration Regulations, the EU Dual Use Regulation, and/or other export control regulations.  As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide either proof of their country of citizenship or proof of their U.S. permanent residency or other protected status (e.g., under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) for assessment of eligibility to access the export controlled information. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees may verify status using other documents, where applicable.
• Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proven track record of leading complex security incidents across cloud and on-premises environments, including containment, eradication, and recovery.
• Cross-Organizational Coordination: Experience developing and implementing incident response frameworks that span multiple business domains such as Healthcare, Legal, and Human Resources.
• Proficiency in scripting languages (e.g., Python, PowerShell, Bash) and familiarity with SIEM/SOAR platforms.
• Regulatory & Compliance Awareness:Understanding of regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI, and HITRUST, and how they impact incident response and audit readiness.
• Threat Modeling & Risk Analysis: Ability to partner with threat modeling teams and develop logging and telemetry standards to support proactive detection and investigation.
• Automation & Process Optimization - Experience designing automated workflows to reduce detection and response times and integrating security processes into CI/CD pipelines.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Skilled in working with cross-functional teams including engineering, legal, HR, and compliance to align incident response strategies and governance.
• Mentorship & Enablement: Demonstrated ability to mentor early-career analysts and responders in security principles, incident handling, and post-incident analysis.
• Communication & Influence: Effective verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to influence decision making and drive alignment across diverse teams.

Security Operations Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $158,400 - $258,000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay 

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 7, 2025.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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