Role overview
Mercor is hiring SOC Investigation Specialist on behalf of high-growth technology and enterprise partners building next-generation SOC automation and AI-driven investigation systems. This role is ideal for experienced SOC analysts who can apply real-world investigative judgment to review, validate, and construct high-quality security investigations across SIEM, endpoint, cloud, and identity environments.
Responsibilities
- Review, monitor, and evaluate SOC alerts and investigation outputs based on predefined scenarios and criteria.
- Distinguish true positives from false positives by validating investigative evidence and alert context.
- Perform end-to-end security investigations when required, including log analysis, entity pivoting, timeline reconstruction, and evidence correlation.
- Assess the correctness, completeness, and quality of SOC investigations produced by automated or human workflows.
- Apply consistent investigative judgment while recognizing that multiple valid investigation paths may exist for the same alert.
- Make clear binary determinations (e.g., ACCEPT / PASS) while also producing detailed ground-truth investigations when required.
- Use Splunk extensively to pivot across logs, entities, and timelines, including reading and reasoning about SPL queries.
- Maintain clear and accurate documentation of investigative steps, assumptions, evidence, and conclusions.
- Collaborate with program leads and other expert annotators to uphold high-quality investigation and annotation standards.
- Mentor or support other analysts where applicable, particularly in long-term or lead annotator roles.
Requirements
- 3+ years of hands-on experience as a SOC analyst in a production SOC environment (Tier 2 or above strongly preferred).
- Strong understanding of alert triage, incident investigation workflows, and evidence-based decision-making under time constraints.
- Mandatory hands-on experience with Splunk, including:
- Conducting investigations using Splunk
- Reading, understanding, and reasoning about SPL queries
- Pivoting between logs, entities, and timelines
- Proven ability to evaluate SOC investigations and determine whether conclusions are valid, incomplete, or incorrect.
- Strong investigative judgment and comfort making decisive evaluations.
- Fluent English (written and spoken) with strong documentation and communication skills.
Nice to Have
- Experience with Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) tools such as CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, or SentinelOne.
- Experience analyzing cloud security logs and signals:
- AWS (CloudTrail, GuardDuty)
- Azure (Activity Log, Defender for Cloud)
- GCP (Cloud Audit Logs)
- Familiarity with Identity & Access Management platforms such as Okta Identity Cloud or Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD).
- Experience with email security tools like Proofpoint or Mimecast.
- SOC leadership or mentoring experience.
- Basic scripting experience (Python or similar).
- Security certifications (optional): GCIA, GCIH, GCED, Splunk certifications, Security+, CCNA, or cloud security certifications.
Why Join
- Work on cutting-edge SOC automation and AI-driven investigation systems.
- Apply real-world SOC expertise to shape how future security teams investigate and respond to threats.
- Take ownership of high-impact investigative evaluations and ground-truth security cases.
- Collaborate with experienced SOC practitioners, security engineers, and AI teams.
- Join Mercor’s global network of vetted security professionals.
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