Tier 2 Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst

About the Role

Leidos is seeking experienced Tier 2 Security Operations Center (SOC) Analysts to support the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) CyberPRIMES program. This role involves advanced analysis of cybersecurity events escalated from Tier 1 or identified through enterprise monitoring. The analyst will correlate security data, determine the scope and impact of suspicious activity, support incident triage and containment, preserve evidence, and coordinate with incident responders to protect DHRA systems and networks.

Key Responsibilities

• Perform advanced analysis of cybersecurity events escalated from Tier 1 or identified through endpoint, user-activity, network, and other enterprise monitoring capabilities.
• Correlate alerts, security telemetry, and supporting technical data to determine the nature, scope, severity, and potential impact of cybersecurity activity.
• Distinguish legitimate activity, false positives, policy violations, suspicious behavior, and potential cybersecurity incidents.
• Determine appropriate next actions based on approved SOC procedures, playbooks, and escalation criteria.
• Recommend or initiate authorized actions to contain or mitigate identified threats.
• Support cybersecurity incident triage, escalation, and containment in coordination with the incident-response team.
• Preserve relevant technical evidence and supporting information required for further investigation and incident response.
• Document investigative actions, analysis, findings, and conclusions in Government-approved systems.
• Maintain complete and accurate event records, tickets, timelines, and supporting evidence.
• Contribute to required SOC event reporting and operational status information.
• Perform Tier 2 troubleshooting of cybersecurity tools, alerts, security data, and related technical issues.
• Use approved Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) security-analysis tools to investigate cybersecurity events.
• Support security testing, mitigation activities, and cybersecurity compliance checking as required by SOC operations.
• Coordinate analysis with incident responders, network engineers, endpoint-security personnel, cybersecurity-tool teams, system administrators, and other cybersecurity stakeholders.
• Identify recurring false positives, detection gaps, or ineffective alerting and recommend improvements to monitoring and detection capabilities.
• Support tuning of cybersecurity monitoring capabilities to improve detection accuracy and analyst effectiveness.
• Contribute to SOC procedure, playbook, and process improvements based on operational experience and lessons learned.
• Support knowledge transfer across SOC analysts to improve consistent analysis and response within the 24x7 operating environment.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Experience performing cybersecurity event analysis, SOC operations, cyber defense, incident triage, or security monitoring.
• Experience analyzing and correlating alerts from multiple cybersecurity monitoring capabilities.
• Experience investigating endpoint, network, user-activity, or other cybersecurity events.
• Experience determining the scope, severity, and potential impact of suspicious cybersecurity activity.
• Experience supporting cybersecurity incident escalation, containment, mitigation, or evidence preservation.
• Experience using enterprise security-analysis or cybersecurity monitoring tools.
• Experience performing Tier 2 cybersecurity troubleshooting.
• Working knowledge of cybersecurity attack techniques, network-security concepts, endpoint security, event analysis, and incident-response processes.
• Ability to document investigations, findings, actions, and conclusions clearly and accurately.
• Ability to work effectively within a team-based 24x7 security operations environment.
• U.S. Citizenship required.
• Active Secret security clearance required.

Qualifications

• BS degree or equivalent and 2+ years of prior relevant experience, or a Masters with less than 2 years prior relevant experience. In lieu of degree, additional experience may be required.