Incident Manager, DFIR - Remote (Anywhere in the U.S.)

Position Summary:

We are seeking a skilled and experienced Incident Manager to serve as the client-facing lead during cybersecurity incident response engagements. This role is responsible for managing active incidents, serving as the central point of contact for clients, external legal counsel, and insurance carriers, ensuring the coordinated progression of response activities across multiple internal and external teams. The ideal candidate brings deep experience handling a wide range of cyber incident including ransomware, business email compromise (BEC), advanced persistent threats (APT) and excels in delivering clear guidance, managing complex workstreams, and ensuring incident response efforts are efficient, optimized, completed on time and budget, transparent, and well-documented.

Key Responsibilities:

• Engagement Leadership: Act as the incident manager and primary point of contact during client-facing cybersecurity incidents. Serve as the face of the company to clients, insurers, and legal counsel throughout the lifecycle of each engagement.
• Incident Expertise: Provide strategic guidance across diverse incident types such as ransomware, BEC, APT, cloud, SaaS, and insider-based threats. Support containment, communication, remediation planning, and long-term recovery efforts.
• Initial Scoping: Participate in initial calls with client, external counsel, cyber insurance carriers to gather incident context, determine scope, and help define response needs. Collaborate on the development of tailored Statements of Work (SOWs).
• Workstream Oversight: Effectively capture and communicate the status of concurrent workstreams across internal teams (Digital Forensics & Incident Response, Threat Actor Communications, Recovery & Restoration) and third-party stakeholders. Ensure task ownership, accountability, and forward momentum.
• Status Tracking & Communication: Capture and deliver clear, timely daily status summaries to clients and stakeholders. Communicate technical, operational, risk and road-block updates in a business-relevant and easy to understand format.
• Expectation Management: Set and reinforce clear expectations with all involved parties including clients, legal, and insurers on timelines, deliverables, priorities, and responsibilities throughout the engagement.
• Progression & Execution: Drive the incident forward, ensuring tasks are completed on time by both internal teams and external parties. Identify blockers early and proactively escalate or resolve issues to maintain engagement momentum.
• Reporting & Documentation: Lead development, quality assurance and delivery of status summaries, executive summaries, and final reports. Ensure documentation aligns with legal, regulatory, and insurance expectations and meets the company standards for deliverables.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Interface regularly with cyber insurance carriers, breach coaches, and other third parties to ensure consistent information flow, documentation, and coordination throughout the incident.

Qualifications:

• 7+ years of experience in cybersecurity, with strong incident response and client-facing experience.
• Demonstrated expertise managing incidents involving ransomware, BEC, APT, and other threat actor activity.
• Strong background in coordinating complex engagements with multiple parallel workstreams and diverse stakeholders.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to manage high-pressure, high-visibility engagements.
• Proven ability to organize, track, and communicate daily updates and status summaries to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Familiarity with digital forensics methodologies, threat actor TTPs, negotiation dynamics, and recovery strategies.
• Experience working directly with DFIR teams, ransomware negotiators, and restoration specialists.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field; certifications such as CISM, CISSP, GCFA, GCIH, or similar are a plus.

Work Environment & Travel

• Occasional travel may be required (up to 20%) in support of client engagements, critical incidents, or GuidePoint Security related activities/events.
• Role will require availability during evenings/weekends during high-priority incidents and participation in an on-call rotation.

Key Attributes for Success:

• Confident and composed under pressure, with a structured and proactive approach to problem-solving.
• Detail-oriented with strong organizational and time-management skills.
• Business-aware communicator who can tailor messaging to diverse audiences.
• Driven to deliver exceptional client experiences while continuously improving internal processes and outcomes.