SOC Investigation Specialist Talent Network

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.

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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).