Senior / Principal SOC Engineering

Senior / Principal SOC Engineering Lead We are looking for a highly experienced Senior / Principal SOC Engineering Lead to help develop and mature Cyber Defense and Security Operations capabilities within a complex enterprise environment. This is a senior hands-on technical leadership role combining SOC Engineering, Microsoft Sentinel, Defender XDR, security telemetry, detection engineering and engineering process improvement. You will play a key role in strengthening both the technical capabilities of the SOC and the engineering practices surrounding them. A central part of the assignment is to assess an environment where processes, ownership and technical structures may not yet be fully mature, identify pragmatic improvements and then drive those improvements through implementation. We are therefore looking for someone who can do more than provide recommendations. You need to be comfortable taking technical ownership, creating structure and working hands-on to turn decisions into sustainable production solutions. Key Responsibilities You will: Engineer, develop and continuously improve SOC capabilities across Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR. Improve security telemetry, log ingestion, integrations, detections and analyst workflows. Design and improve SIEM architecture, telemetry onboarding and log pipelines. Develop and optimize detection engineering capabilities and security use cases. Improve integrations between security platforms, internal systems and external services. Establish and improve engineering processes for service ownership, lifecycle management and change control. Develop appropriate monitoring, documentation, risk tracking and technical roadmaps. Identify technical and operational gaps and translate them into pragmatic engineering improvements. Lead technical initiatives across Cyber Defense Engineering, SOC and dependent platform/application teams. Drive technical improvements from initial assessment and design through implementation and production. Support the development of sustainable and scalable engineering practices across the security organization. Required Experience We are looking for someone with: Strong practical experience within SOC Engineering or Cyber Defense Engineering. Extensive hands-on experience with Microsoft Sentinel. Hands-on experience with Microsoft Defender XDR. Strong experience with SIEM engineering in complex production environments. Experience with security telemetry onboarding and large-scale log ingestion. Experience designing and maintaining log pipelines and security integrations. Strong practical experience with Detection Engineering. Experience improving analyst workflows and operational SOC capabilities. Experience establishing or improving engineering processes around security platforms. Experience leading complex technical initiatives across multiple teams. Highly Desirable Experience Experience within the following areas would be particularly valuable: SOAR and security automation MSSP integrations KQL and advanced Sentinel use cases Security platform lifecycle management SOC transformation or modernization Large-scale security telemetry environments SIEM migrations or major platform transformations Security service ownership Technical roadmaps and architecture Cyber Defense operating models Seniority & Technical Leadership This assignment requires a Senior Technical Lead or Principal-level Individual Contributor. Formal personnel management experience is not required. However, you must have a proven track record of successfully leading SOC or Cyber Defense engineering initiatives and driving improvements across multiple technical teams. You should be comfortable entering an environment where operating models, processes or technical ownership may initially be unclear or immature. You must be able to assess the current state, identify the most important gaps and introduce a pragmatic level of structure without creating unnecessary complexity. Most importantly, this is not an advisory-only role. You will be expected to drive implementation, take technical ownership and ensure that improvements become operational and sustainable in production. We are looking for someone who can combine deep technical expertise with the ability to create structure, influence technical direction and get things done across organizational boundaries.