SOC Analyst

Leidos has a current opportunity for a Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst supporting the Pentagon Reservation under the DISA GSM-O II TN24 Penetration Handling, Incident, System Health (PHISH) Support Services II program. This position supports a 24/7 SOC mission and requires availability for rotating shifts, including weekends, holidays, and inclement-weather operations.

The Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst supports continuous monitoring, detection, analysis, escalation, mitigation, and response to cybersecurity events affecting customer networks, endpoints, servers, applications, cloud environments, and mission systems. The analyst uses security telemetry, threat intelligence, established analytic procedures, and operational tools to identify suspicious or malicious activity; investigate potential compromises; document findings; and coordinate response actions with senior analysts, incident responders, cyber engineers, system owners, and mission partners.

This role is an experienced technical individual-contributor position. The SOC Analyst works independently to achieve day-to-day operational objectives and may own defined projects or technical processes within the SOC. The analyst contributes to operational cybersecurity, infrastructure support, and mission-support activities; collaborates with internal subject-matter experts to resolve technical problems; and may provide peer support, coaching, or technical review for less-experienced personnel.

Primary Responsibilities

• Monitor, triage, and investigate alerts from Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), authentication logs, NetFlow, packet capture, cloud-security tools, vulnerability data, and other available security sensors.
• Analyze endpoint, host, network, identity, application, and cloud telemetry to identify anomalous, suspicious, or malicious activity.
• Conduct assigned incident investigations by reviewing security logs and alerts, correlating evidence across available data sources, identifying potentially affected systems or accounts, assessing scope and potential impact, and escalating cases in accordance with established procedures.
• Apply cyber threat intelligence and knowledge of adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to validate alerts, identify indicators of compromise, prioritize investigations, and provide relevant context to incident responders and technical stakeholders.
• Support approved containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident activities by collecting evidence, documenting actions, validating security controls, and coordinating with designated response personnel.
• Perform computer forensic network and host analysis in support of incident investigations, threat-hunting activities, and evidence-based reporting.
• Support proactive threat hunts, environment sweeps, and detection-validation activities based on known or emerging adversary activity, vulnerabilities, and organizational priorities.
• Identify recurring false positives, control gaps, telemetry limitations, suspicious trends, vulnerabilities, and adversary behaviors; recommend improvements to detection logic, dashboards, analytic workflows, playbooks, and SOC processes.
• Contribute to the development, testing, tuning, and documentation of detection use cases, correlation logic, analytic playbooks, standard operating procedures, work instructions, and knowledge-management artifacts.
• Document analytic methods, evidence, findings, actions taken, escalation decisions, and recommended next steps in case-management and knowledge-management systems.
• Prepare clear incident tickets, shift summaries, situational-awareness updates, and technical reports for SOC personnel, incident responders, system owners, and operational stakeholders.
• Conduct authorized infrastructure-support activities, including device discovery, operating-system fingerprinting, service scanning, passive network scanning, and support to the configuration, testing, deployment, and maintenance of cybersecurity hardware and software.
• Maintain proficiency with operational tools, cyber-defense methodologies, network and host analysis techniques, and evolving threats.
• Support training, exercises, operational planning, and integrated cyber operations as assigned.
• Collaborate with SOC operations, incident response, cyber engineering, threat intelligence, system administrators, and mission partners to share findings and support timely remediation.
• Provide technical guidance, peer review, and knowledge sharing to junior analysts or other team members, as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• Must have an active DoD Top Secret clearance with ability to obtain SCI
• Must have DoD 8570 IAT II or higher certification (such as CompTIA Security+ CE, ISC2 SSCP, SANS GSEC, etc.) prior to starting.
• Must be able to obtain DoD 8570 CSSP-Analyst certification (such as CEH, CySA+, GCIA, etc.) within 6 months of starting.
• Bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity, information technology, computer science, intelligence studies, or a related technical discipline, and 4-8 years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of relevant military service, cybersecurity education, certifications, and professional experience.
• Experience supporting a SOC, CND organization, cyber protection team, incident-response team, network operations center, or comparable cybersecurity operations environment.
• Experience monitoring and investigating cybersecurity events using SIEM, EDR, IDS/IPS, endpoint, network, identity, cloud, vulnerability, and log-data sources.
• Working knowledge of incident-response processes, including alert triage, investigation, escalation, evidence collection, containment support, remediation coordination, and incident documentation.
• Working knowledge of TCP/IP; common ports and protocols; network traffic flow; endpoint and operating-system fundamentals; authentication and identity activity; and enterprise security controls.
• Familiarity with adversary TTPs, attack vectors, indicators of compromise, common malware behaviors, and analytic frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and the Cyber Kill Chain.
• Ability to analyze available data, identify gaps or uncertainties, apply established procedures, and communicate technically sound findings and recommendations.
• Ability to prepare clear case notes, incident summaries, shift-turnover products, and technical reports for technical and operational audiences.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across SOC operations, incident response, cyber engineering, system administration, and customer or mission-partner organizations.
• Ability to work independently on assigned operational objectives, technical processes, or projects, while recognizing when to seek assistance or escalate risk.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience using one or more enterprise SIEM platforms, such as Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, IBM QRadar, ArcSight, Elastic, or comparable tools.
• Experience with EDR, antivirus, host-based security tools, IDS/IPS, network detection and response, vulnerability-management tools, NetFlow, or packet-capture analysis.
• Familiarity with Windows and Unix/Linux operating systems, command-line tools, and system-administration concepts.
• Experience with structured threat hunting, detection tuning, use-case development, or translating threat intelligence into analytic queries.
• Familiarity with malicious-file triage, malware-analysis concepts, network-forensics techniques, or host-forensics artifacts.
• Experience with scripting or automation using Python, PowerShell, Bash, or a similar language.
• Relevant cybersecurity certification(s), including those required by the applicable contract, customer, or Department of War policy.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo - because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 - and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

For U.S. Positions: While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.