Cyber Threats Strategy Lead

At IBM, the Senior Manager, Cyber Threats inspires, engages and motivates their staff to deliver practical, real-world benefits to the defense of IBM’s cyber security. This is a high-visibility role with the potential to make a real difference within one of the technology sector’s most well-established companies. The role reports to the Vice President of Cyber Security Defense and has three primary responsibilities:

• First-line manager to the TI team, which comprises a multi-disciplinary group of analysts, investigators and related technical specialists.
• First-line manager to the TH Manager, who in turn manages the TH practitioners. The Senior Manager is the de facto Second-line Manager of the TH team.
• Overall technical and business area lead for Threats, setting direction and strategy for Threats to inform and shape IBM’s defensive cyber security posture.

Your role and responsibilities

The Cyber Security Threats Senior Manager plays an important role in the wider cyber security operations leadership team – providing advice, guidance and support on intelligence, hunting and wider threat-related matters. The Senior Manager sets the Threats strategy, which includes enacting specific elements and contributing to medium/long-term objectives. The Senior Manager is responsible for fulfilling the objectives of the Cyber Security Defense Vice President, which may include specific task-level delegations and representing IBM in external matters.

The Senior Manager ensures the team is contributing accurate, relevant and reliable Threats ‘products’ – specifically:

• Ensuring both teams’ focus is set appropriately.
• Maintaining overall control of the Threats backlog.
• Balancing the need to address short term ‘tactical’ questions with the need to establish practical, appropriate and effective priorities that fulfil IBM’s cyber defense needs.
• Collaborating with the TH Manager to set and execute the priorities and direction for the threat hunters.
• Ensuring the unique skills and capabilities of all team members are used to best effect.
• Ensuring timely collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of intelligence to the right audience. This is vital in ensuring threats are identified quickly and efficiently.
• Performing disposition of intelligence to establish its relevance to the corporation – crucially, providing context to all-source intelligence to inform the specific threat to IBM and what mitigation options are available.

The Cyber Security Threats Manager is responsible for building and maintaining the Intelligence collection and dissemination plan - aligned with the ISTAR framework - to support the IBM’s Cyber Defensestrategy. A vital part of the Senior Manager’s role is understanding the needs and priority requirements of Threats “end-users” – including the other cyber defense teams. Here, the Senior Manager is also part ‘Product Owner’ and is responsible for the developing and maintaining relationships with end-users for mutual benefit. To do this, they must have a sound appreciation of the work performed by other teams and the pressures they face.

Finally, the Senior Manager may also lead work with external agencies – such as ENISA and the NCFTA. At times, this may require them to represent IBM within external communities, which includes conferences and partnership programs.

Leaders are expected to spend time with their teams and clients and therefore are generally expected to be in the workplace a minimum of three days a week, subject to business needs.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Deep, demonstrable knowledge of cyber security threats – including attack methods, patterns and practices, adversaries – capabilities, motivations and opportunities, malicious software / living off the land, adversary infrastructure.
• Deep knowledge in the decomposition of threats and modeling them to design, implement, tune and manage cyber security defenses.
• Thorough, demonstrable understanding of Threat Intelligence practices and tradecraft.
• Understanding and practical awareness of Threat Hunting practices and tradecraft, as required to support the Threat Hunt team and set overall direction for the Threats team.
• Experience working with external partners including government agencies.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience with IBM technologies – hardware and software.
• Experience with prototyping and creating early-stage IT infrastructure.
• Experience applying AI technologies to reduce toil and in solving practical cyber threats-related problems.
• Experience in software development, security within the development lifecycle and Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery technologies.
• Experience working with cyber-physical security teams.
• Experience leading and maintaining external partnerships and related programs.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Systems helps IT leaders think differently about their infrastructure. IBM servers and storage are no longer inanimate - they can understand, reason, and learn so our clients can innovate while avoiding IT issues. Our systems power the world’s most important industries and our clients are the architects of the future.Join us to help build our leading-edge technology portfoliodesigned for cognitive business and optimized for cloud computing.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

Job Title

Senior Manager Cyber Security Threats

Date posted

18-Sep-2026

Job ID

131930

City / Township / Village

Austin

State / Province

Texas

Country

United States

Work arrangement

Hybrid

Area of work

Consulting

Employment type

Regular

Contract type

Regular

Projected Minimum Salary per year

155,000.00

Projected Maximum Salary per year

289,000.00

Position type

Professional

Up to 20% or 1 day a week

Company

(0147) International Business Machines Corporation

Shift

General (daytime)

Is this role a commissionable/sales incentive based position?

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