Overview:

A leading blue chip organisation is seeking an experienced SOC Effectiveness Consultant to lead a critical uplift in the maturity and operational impact of its Security Operations Centre (SOC). This high-visibility role requires a hands-on, consultative professional with deep experience in building, maturing, and optimising SOC environments.

The current SOC is in the early stages of development, with processes, tooling, and capability requiring significant enhancement. The successful consultant will take a coaching and mentoring approach, helping shape best practice operations while working collaboratively across cybersecurity, IT, and business teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Assess the current maturity of the SOC against industry frameworks (eg, MITRE ATT&CK, NIST, SOC-CMM, etc.) and define an actionable improvement roadmap

• Provide hands-on consultancy to uplift SOC processes, incident response playbooks, threat intelligence integration, and shift coverage

• Mentor and coach existing SOC analysts and team leads to build technical and operational capability

• Recommend and support implementation of modern SOC tooling, automation, and use case development aligned to business risk

• Design and embed operational KPIs and metrics to improve visibility, accountability, and reporting to senior stakeholders

• Align SOC practices with wider security governance, vulnerability management, and risk management frameworks

• Act as a trusted advisor to the Head of Cybersecurity and other senior stakeholders, offering guidance on capability growth and strategic direction

Required Skills & Experience:

• Extensive experience leading or transforming SOCs within enterprise or critical infrastructure environments

• Proven track record of uplifting SOC maturity from low/immature to high-performing or "best-in-class" status

• In-depth knowledge of SOC technologies and processes including SIEM, SOAR, threat hunting, and incident response

• Strong understanding of threat intelligence, MITRE ATT&CK, cyber kill chain, and log analysis

• Experience coaching and mentoring SOC teams across multiple levels of maturity and technical skill

• Familiarity with relevant frameworks and standards such as NIST CSF, ISO 27001, CIS Controls, and SOC-CMM

• Excellent interpersonal, stakeholder management, and communication skills - able to influence and lead through credibility rather than authority

Desirable Qualifications:

• Certifications such as CISSP, CISM, SANS GCIA/GCED, or similar

• Experience working with SIEM/SOAR platforms (eg, Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, QRadar, Cortex XSOAR)

• Background in both blue-team operations and cyber resilience strategy

• Prior experience in regulated sectors such as finance, telecom, or critical national infrastructure is a strong plus