Principal Incident Response Analyst

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Principal Incident Response Analyst North - Remote The Principal Incident Response Analyst is a seasoned, deeply experienced incident response expert who runs North’s most complex security incidents from detection through recovery, without supervision. Incident response is the primary area of expertise for this role, complemented by strong secondary expertise in detection engineering and tertiary expertise in threat hunting. The Principal Incident Response Analyst serves as the top escalation point for security incidents, sets the technical standard for how the organization investigates and contains threats, and mentors other engineers and analysts on incident handling practice. This role works closely with the SOC, IT, and engineering teams, and represents the deepest incident response expertise on the security team, operating across our payment processing environment. What You'll do: • Incident Response • Serve as the principal escalation point and lead investigator for the most complex, highest-severity, and novel security incidents, running them end to end without supervision • Independently triage, investigate, contain, eradicate, and recover from security incidents spanning endpoint, network, cloud, identity, and application layers • Lead full-scope forensic investigations of compromised hosts, accounts, applications, and cloud infrastructure, and reconstruct complete attack timelines from initial access through impact • Translate complex investigation findings into clear narratives for engineering teams and clear executive-level narratives for leadership • Own and continuously evolve incident response process, documentation, and playbooks, incorporating lessons learned from real incidents • Lead root cause analysis and structured post-incident reviews, and drive cross-team remediation of systemic gaps • Serve as the senior technical lead during major incidents, coordinating across IT, legal, compliance, and executive leadership as needed • Provide case-level guidance and mentorship to other incident responders and SOC analysts during live incidents • Participate in or lead on-call rotation for critical incident response as needed • Detection Engineering • Translate incident findings and root cause analysis directly into new or improved detection logic, closing the loop between investigation and prevention • Write, tune, and validate detection content in the SIEM/NG-SIEM platform, focused on techniques observed in real investigations and threat hunts • Maintain and improve coverage and gap analysis against the MITRE ATT&CK framework, informed by incident and hunt findings • Review detection logic for accuracy and false-positive rate, and partner with the detection engineering team on rule quality • Contribute documentation of known coverage and detection gaps surfaced through incident response and hunting work • Threat Hunting • Conduct proactive, hypothesis-driven threat hunts based on incident trends, emerging adversary TTPs, and threat intelligence • Use hunt outcomes to surface undetected compromises, validate detection coverage, and strengthen incident response readiness • Prioritize hunts against the techniques and attack paths most relevant to a payments/fintech environment • Partner with threat intelligence sources and feeds to inform hunt hypotheses and target selection • Document hunt methodology, findings, and follow-on actions, including new detections and updated incident response playbook material • Cross-Functional & Leadership • Represent incident response in cross-org planning, tabletop exercises, and architecture reviews • Lead complex, ambiguous incident-related investigations and initiatives independently from scoping through delivery • Mentor other engineers and analysts on incident response, detection engineering, and threat hunting practices • Partner with cloud, network, and identity teams to close visibility and telemetry gaps identified during incidents and hunts • Stay current on threat intelligence, adversary TTPs, and vulnerabilities relevant to a payments/fintech environment • Communicate findings, coverage gaps, and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including leadership • Develop and maintain procedure and policy documentation supporting incident response operations What we need from you: • Bachelor's degree in a technical field, or equivalent professional experience • 7+ years of hands-on information security experience, with deep, demonstrated subject-matter expertise in incident response, and strong working proficiency in detection engineering and threat hunting • Demonstrated track record independently leading complex, high-severity security incidents from detection through recovery, without supervision • Experience mentoring or providing technical leadership to other security engineers and analysts • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical findings for non-technical stakeholders and leadership, including during active incidents • Deep, hands-on expertise leading end-to-end incident response (triage, containment, eradication, recovery, and root cause analysis) on complex or novel incidents, independently • Advanced digital forensics skills across endpoint, network, cloud, and identity sources, including memory and disk forensics • Advanced experience with EDR/XDR platforms and log analysis across diverse sources: endpoint, network, cloud, and identity • Strong working knowledge of detection engineering: writing, tuning, and validating detection content in a SIEM or NG-SIEM platform (e.g., CrowdStrike NG-SIEM, Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel) • Working proficiency in hypothesis-driven threat hunting methodology, informed by threat intelligence and the MITRE ATT&CK framework • Deep working knowledge of the MITRE ATT&CK framework and its practical application to incident response, detection gap analysis, and hunt pr