Cyber Security Consultant - Threat Management at IBM

In this role, you'll work in one of our IBM Consulting Client Innovation Centers (Delivery Centers), where we deliver deep technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients around the world. Our delivery centers offer our clients locally based skills and technical expertise to drive innovation and adoption of new technology.

Your role and responsibilities
As a Cyber Security Consultant specialising in Threat Management, you will strengthen clients’ detection, response, and security operations capabilities across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments. You will design and uplift SIEM, logging, and threat detection architectures, build and tune analytics rules, integrate diverse log sources, and enable automated investigation and response workflows.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and uplift SIEM architectures, including log ingestion, parsing, normalization, enrichment, and use-case development.
• Develop, tune, and optimize detection analytics, improving signal fidelity and reducing false positives across diverse environments.
• Integrate cloud, on-prem, and SaaS log sources (e.g., Azure, AWS, EDR, identity, network, application telemetry) into unified monitoring platforms.
• Lead SOC uplift engagements, including capability assessments, detection maturity reviews, and roadmap development.
• Build and refine automated workflows and playbooks using SOAR tooling to improve investigation and response efficiency.
• Conduct threat hunting and proactive detection exercises, aligned to MITRE ATT&CK and client threat profiles.
• Advise on operational processes, including incident response, escalation pathways, runbooks, SLAs, and KPI/OKR design.
• Develop detection engineering standards, including naming conventions, alert lifecycle, and correlation logic patterns.
• Troubleshoot complex SIEM/SOC issues, including rule misfires, ingestion failures, misconfigured integrations, and analytic gaps.
• Deliver workshops and stakeholder briefings, translating technical detection and operational insights into business-focused recommendations.

Required education

• None

Preferred education

• Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Hands-on experience with major SIEM platforms, such as Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk, LogRhythm, QRadar, Elastic, or similar.
• Strong detection engineering experience, including analytic rule creation, KQL/SPL/detection logic, alert tuning, and correlation design.
• Ability to onboard and normalize log sources across cloud (Azure/AWS), identity, EDR/XDR, network, firewall, application, and SaaS systems.
• Working knowledge of MITRE ATT&CK, detection coverage mapping, and threat-informed defence principles.
• Experience with SOAR platforms (e.g., Sentinel automation, Splunk SOAR, Cortex XSOAR, Siemplify) and building automated response playbooks.
• Understanding of EDR/XDR technologies, endpoint telemetry, and detection patterns.
• Experience with incident response processes, triage, investigation workflows, escalation paths, containment, and recovery actions.
• Ability to produce high-quality HLDs/LLDs, runbooks, detection standards, and SOC procedures.
• Proficiency in query and scripting languages relevant to detection engineering (KQL/SPL/SQL/Python/PowerShell).
• Consulting experience, including stakeholder management, delivery ownership, and presenting operational findings.

This role requires eligibility for UK Government security clearance. Candidates who already hold clearance (SC or DV) are encouraged to apply, but we will fully consider applicants who meet the eligibility criteria and can obtain clearance.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Relevant certifications such as SC-200, AZ-500, GCDA, GCIA, GCIH, Splunk Enterprise Security, or vendor-specific SIEM accreditations.
• Experience leading SOC maturity assessments or building SOC capability uplift roadmaps.
• Experience with EDR/XDR advanced features, detection logic tuning, and behavioral analytics.
• Familiarity with cloud-native detection engines (e.g., AWS GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudTrail analytics, GCP SCC).
• Understanding of log ingestion architectures, data retention, EPS sizing, ingestion cost optimization, and schema standardization.
• Exposure to threat intelligence integration, enrichment pipelines, and TI-driven detection logic.
• Experience working in or alongside SOC L2/L3 teams, including content development and continuous improvement cycles.
• Understanding of regulatory or compliance-driven environments, such as public sector, finance, or critical national infrastructure.
• Knowledge of Zero Trust architectures and identity-centric detection strategies.
• Experience contributing to or overseeing SOC transitions, including outsourcing/insourcing, MSSP coordination, or tooling migration.