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.