Director, Cybersecurity Operations

Overview:

The Director, Cybersecurity Operations is responsible for leading and evolving the company's cybersecurity operations capabilities to proactively protect enterprise assets, information, and business operations. This role provides strategic and operational leadership across security monitoring and incident response, exposure management, business continuity and disaster recovery, security awareness, and managed security service providers, ensuring cyber risks are effectively identified, managed, and remediated. The Director partners closely with executive leadership, IT, business stakeholders, and external partners to enhance cyber resilience, drive continuous improvement, and deliver a high-performing security operations program aligned with business objectives and risk tolerance.

This role will be based out of Irving, Texas.

Responsibilities:

Operational Governance & Managed Services Oversight

• Govern the performance, delivery, and continuous improvement of managed security service providers (e.g., MDR, SOC, vulnerability management).
• Define and enforce service-level agreements (SLAs), key performance indicators (KPIs), and outcome-driven metrics aligned to business risk.
• Ensure appropriate escalation, incident handling, and reporting processes are in place and operating effectively.

Threat Detection & Response (SOC / CIRT)

• Oversee enterprise threat detection, monitoring, and incident response capabilities, including SIEM, EDR, and threat intelligence integration.
• Ensure readiness and effectiveness of incident response processes, including coordination with crisis management and external partners.
• Drive maturity in detection engineering, threat hunting, and response orchestration to reduce dwell time and improve response outcomes.
• Provide executive-level reporting on threat landscape, incident trends, and response effectiveness.

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BC/DR)

• Govern cybersecurity alignment with enterprise business continuity and disaster recovery planning.
• Ensure cyber incident scenarios are integrated into BC/DR plans and regularly tested through exercises.
• Coordinate with IT and business stakeholders to validate recovery capabilities and resilience objectives.

Exposure Management (Vulnerability Management & Application Security)

• Lead the enterprise exposure management program, including vulnerability identification, prioritization, and remediation governance.
• Oversee application security practices, including secure SDLC integration and application risk assessments.
• Partner with infrastructure and application owners to ensure timely remediation of identified risks.
• Drive adoption of continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) principles

Security Awareness & Human Risk Management

• Oversee the design and execution of the enterprise security awareness program, including phishing simulations and targeted training.
• Measure and report on human risk reduction metrics and program effectiveness.
• Foster a security-aware culture across the organization.

Strategy & Continuous Improvement

• Partner with cybersecurity leadership to define and execute the strategic roadmap for cybersecurity operations capabilities.
• Identify opportunities to enhance automation, AI-driven detection/response, and operational efficiency.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives across people, process, and technology dimensions.

Stakeholder Engagement & Leadership

• Act as a key liaison between cybersecurity, IT, business units, and external partners.
• Provide regular briefings to executive leadership on operational risk, program maturity, and performance.
• Build and lead a high-performing team, including internal staff and service providers.

Qualifications:

Experience

• 10+ years of experience in cybersecurity, with a significant focus on security operations and incident response.
• Proven leadership experience managing global cybersecurity operations teams and/or managed security service providers.
• Demonstrated experience across multiple domains, including SOC, incident response, vulnerability management, and security awareness.
• Experience developing and executing cybersecurity operational strategies aligned to enterprise risk and compliance requirements.

Education & Certifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Technology, or related field (Master’s preferred).
• Industry certifications such as CISSP, CISM, GIAC, or equivalent preferred.

Technical Expertise

• Strong understanding of threat detection technologies (SIEM, EDR/XDR, SOAR) and incident response methodologies.
• Expertise in vulnerability management, application security, and exposure management practices.
• Familiarity with business continuity and disaster recovery frameworks and integration with cybersecurity.
• Working knowledge of threat intelligence, attack frameworks (e.g., MITRE ATT&CK), and adversary tactics.

Governance & Compliance

• Experience aligning cybersecurity operations with frameworks such as NIST CSF, ISO 27001, NIS2, or similar.
• Strong understanding of operational metrics, SLAs, KPIs, and audit/regulatory expectations.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Strong executive communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to translate technical risk into business impact and actionable insights.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams and influencing without direct authority.
• Proven ability to drive change, operational maturity, and continuous improvement.

Celanese is a global leader in chemistry, producing specialty material solutions used across most major industries and consumer applications. Our businesses use our chemistry, technology and commercial expertise to create value for our customers, employees and shareholders. We support sustainability by responsibly managing the materials we create and growing our portfolio of sustainable products to meet customer and societal demand. We strive to make a positive impact in our communities and to foster inclusivity across our teams. Celanese Corporation employs more than 11,000 employees worldwide with 2024 net sales of $10.3 billion. For more information about Celanese Corporation and its product offerings, visit