About Patelco Credit Union:
Patelco Credit Union is a not-for-profit credit union with a purpose to build financial health and wellbeing for our members. Since 1936, Patelco has grown from $500 in assets to over $9 billion in assets and is the 7th largest credit union in California with branches throughout Northern California.
We are here for our members throughout all their stages of life. Meeting them with the products and services to help them plan purposefully for their futures and to secure our life-long partnership as their trusted financial advocate. As one team, we are all committed to delivering service, empowering financial literacy, creating products, and providing new technology for our members.
We believe that work should be rewarding, challenging, and enjoyable. We’re dedicated to creating a positive and supportive culture where our team members can thrive. If you’re looking to use your skills and knowledge to make a difference in our members’ lives, Patelco could be the perfect fit for you.
Overview:
The Manager, Cyber Defense is a highly strategic and technically skilled expert responsible for leading and maturing the credit union’s Security Operations Center (SOC). This individual drives the design, development, and continuous improvement of threat detection, monitoring, and incident response capabilities.
Reporting to the Director of Security Engineering and Operations, the Cyber Defense Program Manager combines deep technical knowledge of SIEM platforms, threat modeling, and incident response with the leadership experience to guide a high-performing team. This role will be critical in shaping our cyber defense strategy and ensuring detection and response processes align with organizational risk and regulatory requirements.

Responsibilities:

• Define and execute the credit union’s cyber defense and SOC roadmap, aligning it with enterprise security strategy and business objectives.
• Lead threat modeling exercises to identify, assess, and prioritize use cases based on business risk and threat landscape.
• Develop and maintain a library of threat detection use cases aligned with MITRE ATT&CK and other industry frameworks.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure use cases are mapped to critical assets and risk levels.
• SIEM Engineering & Alert Validation
• Ensure proper ingestion, parsing, and normalization of logs from various detection sources into the SIEM (e.g., EDR, firewall, cloud, IAM, etc.).
• Validate the fidelity and accuracy of alerts by testing detection logic and simulating attack scenarios.
• Incident Response & Playbook Design
• Define, document, and maintain incident response playbooks and standard operating procedures (SOPs).
• Coordinate and oversee incident response activities, ensuring timely containment, eradication, and recovery actions.
• Lead and mentor a team of offshore SOC analysts and incident responders, providing guidance on investigations, escalations, and threat intelligence integration.
• Act as a liaison with internal audit, compliance, and IT teams to ensure alignment with regulatory and operational requirements.
• Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to assess the effectiveness of detection and response capabilities.
• Drive post-incident reviews and lessons learned to inform process improvements and detection enhancements.
• Understand and comply with all applicable federal and state laws and banking regulations (including those related to OFAC and Bank Secrecy Act / Anti-Money Laundering compliance) and Patelco Credit Union’s policies and procedures.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Technology, or related field
• 7+ years of experience in security operations, with at least 2+ years in a leadership or managerial role.
• Strong understanding of SIEM platforms (e.g., Google Chronicle/SecOps, Splunk, Exabeam, Sentinel), EDR tools, and threat detection engineering.
• 5+ Experience with threat modeling frameworks (e.g., STRIDE, MITRE ATT&CK).
• 3+ experience developing and testing detection rules, log parsers, and alert tuning.
• Certification including CISSP, GIAC (GCIA, GCFA, GCIH) or similar
• This position is based our of the Dublin HQ Office.

Target Base Pay:
$132,197-$165,255 per year
Compensation at Patelco:
Please note that the salary information is a general guideline only. Patelco Credit Union considers factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate’s work experience, education/training, key skills, internal peer equity, as well as market and business considerations when extending an offer. We offer a competitive total rewards package including a wide range of medical, dental, vision, financial, and other benefits.
We Offer:

• Define and execute the credit union’s cyber defense and SOC roadmap, aligning it with enterprise security strategy and business objectives.
• Lead threat modeling exercises to identify, assess, and prioritize use cases based on business risk and threat landscape.
• Develop and maintain a library of threat detection use cases aligned with MITRE ATT&CK and other industry frameworks.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure use cases are mapped to critical assets and risk levels.
• SIEM Engineering & Alert Validation
• Ensure proper ingestion, parsing, and normalization of logs from various detection sources into the SIEM (e.g., EDR, firewall, cloud, IAM, etc.).
• Validate the fidelity and accuracy of alerts by testing detection logic and simulating attack scenarios.
• Incident Response & Playbook Design
• Define, document, and maintain incident response playbooks and standard operating procedures (SOPs).
• Coordinate and oversee incident response activities, ensuring timely containment, eradication, and recovery actions.
• Lead and mentor a team of offshore SOC analysts and incident responders, providing guidance on investigations, escalations, and threat intelligence integration.
• Act as a liaison with internal audit, compliance, and IT teams to ensure alignment with regulatory and operational requirements.
• Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to assess the effectiveness of detection and response capabilities.
• Drive post-incident reviews and lessons learned to inform process improvements and detection enhancements.
• Understand and comply with all applicable federal and state laws and banking regulations (including those related to OFAC and Bank Secrecy Act / Anti-Money Laundering compliance) and Patelco Credit Union’s policies and procedures