What you will be doing?

This position is contingent upon contract award. We are currently pursuing a proposal and are seeking qualified candidates to include in our submission and identify candidates for future hiring needs on the program once awarded.
At AIS, we are dedicated to providing our employees with diverse opportunities to grow their careers while supporting a variety of impactful projects. For this position, we are seeking a talented individual to join AIS as a Lead Security Engineer.

• Core Knowledge & Skills: Develops strategic security plans, applies advanced cryptography, manages security programs, and designs secure cloud architectures.
• Work & Complexity: Leads strategic projects, integrates security into business processes, develops risk management strategies, and ensures compliance.
• Quality & Independence: Delivers strategic projects, develops innovative solutions, maintains high standards, and ensures stakeholder satisfaction.
• Teamwork & Communication: Leads and mentors teams, aligns efforts with organizational goals, manages performance, and develops training programs.
• Consulting & Engagement: Provides high-level consulting, leads innovation initiatives, develops technology roadmaps, and manages vendor contracts.

As your initial project assignment, you will support the unique needs of our client as a SOC/NOC Engineer - Lead - Shift Work.

Job Summary

As a Lead SOC/NOC Engineer, you will provide technical leadership for a 24/7 managed operations center responsible for the security, stability, and availability of our clients' large-scale Azure and Microsoft 365 environments. You will serve as the senior point of escalation for complex security and infrastructure issues, mentor SOC and NOC engineers, and own the design and continuous improvement of monitoring, alerting, and incident response capabilities. Blending deep security operations (SOC) expertise with network and infrastructure operations (NOC) experience, you will set the standard for operational excellence, drive automation and efficiency, and act as a trusted advisor to clients on strengthening their security posture and operational resilience.

Willingness to work off hours shifts to help a team cover 24x7x365 SLAs, including 4p-12a m-f and/or 12 hour shifts on Sat-Sun and holidays plus two day shifts per week. Willingness to be on call and swap shifts to cover for planned and unplanned absences of teammates.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the senior point of escalation for challenging and complex security and infrastructure issue resolution across Azure and Microsoft 365 environments.

• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance to SOC and NOC engineers, and support their ongoing training and development.

• Own the design, configuration, and maintenance of SIEM, monitoring, and alerting capabilities (e.g., Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, Azure Monitor) to ensure rapid detection and response.

• Build and refine comprehensive security and infrastructure dashboards, alerts, and monitoring tools to gauge the operational security and health of system components.

• Lead incident response for high-severity security events and major infrastructure outages, coordinating across teams through resolution and post-incident review.

• Develop and maintain runbooks, playbooks, procedures, and reporting templates, and establish feedback loops that continuously improve them.

• Drive automation and innovation to improve the efficiency of security and infrastructure operations activities.

• Participate in and lead audit, compliance, accreditation, and authority-to-operate (ATO) support activities, ensuring gaps in coverage are identified and remediated.

• Partner with client stakeholders, vendors, and third parties to enhance overall security posture and operational maturity within the managed environment.

• Establish and enforce operational best practices, including patching, backup and restore, disaster recovery, and change management processes.

• Provide clear, thorough written documentation for the operational procedures of the environments we support.

• Lead shift coverage planning and participate in an on-call rotation to ensure continuous 24x7 operational SLAs.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in security operations, network and infrastructure operations, and/or systems engineering, including operating Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 platforms.

• Demonstrated experience leading or mentoring engineers within a SOC, NOC, or converged operations center.

• Deep, hands-on experience with SIEM configuration and maintenance and a variety of SOC/NOC engineering and administration tools.

• Strong experience managing Azure subscriptions and resources across compute, storage, networking, and identity.

• Proven ability to lead incident response and resolve fast-moving threats such as malware, phishing, and active vulnerabilities.

• Strong engineering analysis, troubleshooting, and communication skills, including client-facing consulting ability.

• Willingness to serve as senior escalation, participate in an on-call rotation, and perform off-hours maintenance as needed.

• CompTIA Security+ certification

• U.S. citizenship and the ability to pass client background checks.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced Microsoft security and cloud certifications such as SC-200, AZ-500, AZ-104, or CySA+.

• Advanced forensics skills to evaluate current malware and phishing threats.

• Deep familiarity with Microsoft Sentinel and the Microsoft Defender suite.

• Experience with operations tooling such as Azure Monitor, Azure Automation, Azure Backup, Azure Security Center, and Azure Update Manager, applied to IaaS and PaaS services (VMs, ASE, AKS, Azure Virtual Desktop, etc.).

• Experience with automation and Infrastructure as Code (ARM, Terraform) and scripting (PowerShell, KQL).

• Experience supporting security audits, accreditation, and ATO processes in regulated or government environments.

• Experience in a managed services provider (MSP) or 24/7 enterprise operations environment.

Join a dedicated team supporting mission-critical operations for our clients. If you're a seasoned operations leader passionate about building world-class security and infrastructure operations, we encourage you to apply.

At AIS, we are committed to offering competitive and fair compensation that reflects the skills, experience, and contributions of each team member.The targeted base salary range for this role is $120,000-$181,000 per year. Please note that this range is provided as a guideline and the final offer will be based on several factors, including but not limited to, skillset and competencies, level of experience, education, certifications, and location.We value transparency in our hiring process and are happy to discuss how your unique qualifications align with our compensation structure during the interview process.