Lead Technical Engineer (SOC)

Lead Technical Engineer (SOC)

*candidates require an active UK SC Clearance*

Start: ASAP

Duration: 6-9 months

Location: 1-2 times per week in Surrey

Rate: up to £800 /day (inside IR35)

We are seeking a Lead Technical Engineer to lead the design and deployment of Security Operations Centre solutions for customers within a Defence-focused environment.

This is a senior, client-facing role for someone with 5–8 years of relevant experience and proven SOC deployment experience for previous clients. You will lead high- and low-level design activities, work with small technical teams, and support the delivery of secure, scalable, and performant SOC solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Lead high-level, low-level, and deployment-level designs for SOC solutions, including component interfaces.
• Support the design, configuration, and deployment of security tools.
• Specify infrastructure requirements and support cloud, on-premises VM, and container-based hosting.
• Design and configure network security devices, routers, switches, VLANs, DNS, and identity management.
• Lead SIEM onboarding activities, ensuring solutions support high data ingest rates.
• Develop test procedures covering functional and non-functional requirements.
• Maintain requirements and user stories, ensuring traceability to solution components.
• Oversee deployment activities, including entry criteria, completion of planned work, and rollback plans.
• Review and approve design, deployment, configuration, and administration documentation.
• Act as a generalist technical SME across cyber monitoring technologies and security tools.

Key skills & experience

• 5–8 years of relevant experience in technical engineering, SOC deployment, or security infrastructure.
• Proven experience designing, building, and deploying SOC solutions for previous clients.
• Experience with at least two of SIEM, SOAR, EDR, Vulnerability Management, or Threat Intelligence.
• Strong experience deploying and configuring applications in cloud and/or on-premises environments, particularly for high data ingest rates.
• Proven experience leading or conducting SIEM onboarding.
• Strong knowledge of on-premises architecture, networking, secure network design, and infrastructure services.
• Understanding of OSI/TCP/IP, IP addressing, subnetting, routing, LAN/WAN, ACLs, and VLANs.
• Experience with compute, storage, OS administration, secure system hardening, endpoint security, and Active Directory/LDAP.
• Knowledge of cyber threats, risk assessment, vulnerability management, and security best practices.
• Good understanding of enterprise ICT services, Security Operations processes, and threat intelligence, threat actors, and TTPs.

Current UK SC clearance.