Head of ISOC – Manchester - £75k
Pearson Carter are currently working with a leading UK Managed Service Provider who are looking to appoint a senior operations leader to head up their Integrated Network & Security Operations Centre (ISOC).
This is a pivotal leadership role for someone who understands how large-scale networks, managed services, and 24/7 operations function in practice — and how security is embedded into resilient service delivery. This role would suit a network-first operational leader with strong security knowledge, rather than a purely cyber-focused profile.
They offer an excellent salary package alongside strong benefits and long-term progression opportunities.
Get in touch if you’re looking for your next leadership opportunity.
Responsibilities
- Lead and develop 24/7 NOC and SOC teams responsible for service monitoring and incident response
- Own day-to-day operational performance across network and security services
- Develop, implement, and maintain operational processes, runbooks, and escalation procedures
- Ensure network performance, availability, and fault resolution remain industry-leading
- Embed security operations into core service resilience
- Act as senior incident commander during major outages or security events
- Drive operational maturity through tooling, automation, and process optimisation
- Align ISOC strategy with wider platform and product teams
- Oversee service KPIs including uptime, SLAs, MTTD, MTTR, and incident recurrence
- Lead post-incident reviews focused on learning and prevention
- Manage vendors, tooling roadmap, and operational budgets
- Provide meaningful operational reporting to senior leadership and customers
Experience
- 8–10 years’ experience in network, infrastructure, or service operations
- Minimum 5 years in a senior operational leadership role
- Proven experience leading NOC teams (ideally alongside SOC functions)
- Strong background in routing, switching, firewalls, VPNs, and load balancers (Fortinet, Juniper, Cisco, Aruba, Check Point)
- Enterprise and cloud networking experience, particularly Microsoft Azure
- Strong incident and crisis management capability
- Good working knowledge of SOC tooling (SIEM, EDR, IDS/IPS)
- Experience working within a Managed Service Provider environment
Qualifications (Desirable)
- Degree in Computer Science, Networking, IT or similar
- ITIL v4 Practitioner
- Certifications such as CCNP, CISSP, CISM (or equivalent experience)
Salary & Benefits
- 33 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays), increasing with service
- Annual pay reviews
- Holiday buy scheme
- All-company bonus scheme
- Death in service cover
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Company pension
- Active social calendar
- Strong focus on personal and professional development
Location
Client has an office based near Manchester. This is a hybrid role 3x a week in office.
How to Apply
Please apply ASAP with your CV to be considered for this position.
You can also get in touch with me on harry.b@pearsoncarter.com or 0191 406 6111.
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