Director of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI)

Job description

About AstraZeneca AstraZeneca is a global, science-led, patient-focused biopharmaceutical company dedicated to discovering, developing, and commercialising prescription medicines for serious disease. We’re committed to being a Great Place to Work. About the Role The Director of Cyber Threat Intelligence will lead a highly technical CTI function within AstraZeneca’s Cybersecurity Operations division, managing a team of analysts to deliver strategic, operational, and tactical intelligence that measurably reduces risk across the enterprise, including manufacturing, clinical trial platforms, and R&D environments. This role anchors CTI to “intel-to-action” outcomes, partnering closely with Vulnerability Management, Detection Engineering, and Incident Response to harden controls, prioritize patching, improve detections, and accelerate response. Key Responsibilities Program Leadership and Strategy: Define CTI vision, operating model, and roadmap aligned to AstraZeneca’s cyber risk reduction strategy, with special emphasis on manufacturing continuity, clinical data integrity, and R&D IP protection. Adversary Prioritization Framework: Design and operate a scoring rubric that ranks actors based on intent/capability/relevance, TTP emergence and prevalence, organization-specific exposure to known vulnerabilities/CVEs, and global “viral” events, maintaining dynamic watchlists and escalation triggers. MTTI Metric and Analytics: Implement analytic methods to estimate mean time-to-impact per adversary (from initial access to material business impact) using internal telemetry, historical incidents, industry reporting, and confidence levels, performing comparisons with IR’s MTTC to drive control improvements. Attack Path Modeling: Build and maintain end-to-end attack path models from initial access to material impact across IT-to-OT pivots, clinical platforms, and R&D environments, mapping steps to MITRE ATT&CK (Enterprise/ICS), identify control gaps and choke points, derive detections-as-code and hunt hypotheses, and support validation efforts including purple-team exercises and adversary emulation to ensure enterprise hardening and measurable risk reduction. Dark Web and Closed-Source Monitoring: Establish collection and monitoring across dark web forums, marketplaces, breach dumps, and closed channels to identify emerging TTPs, credential leaks, data exposure, access-broker listings, and targeting of manufacturing, clinical, or R&D assets, integrating validated findings into TIP/SIEM pipelines, trigger takedown requests where feasible, and deliver rapid advisories with confidence ratings and specific actions for Vulnerability Management, Detection Engineering, and IR. Third-Party and Ecosystem Intelligence: Deliver risk insights for CROs/CMOs/logistics/technology vendors, monitor credential leakage and domain spoofing, and support/coordinate takedown operations when needed. Structured Threat Actor Attribution (Diamond Model): Lead disciplined attribution using the Diamond Model (adversary, capability, infrastructure, victim) and complementary frameworks, correlating TTPs, tooling lineage, code-reuse, infrastructure overlaps, and victimology with confidence levels and analytic caveats, documenting hypotheses, alternative explanations, and disconfirming evidence, and producing reusable actor profiles and pivot paths that inform prioritization, detections, hunts, and incident response playbooks. Support Vulnerability Management: Partner with Vulnerability Management to contextualize CVEs (exploitability, weaponization, external scanning telemetry, compensating controls) and deliver risk-based patching prioritization across AstraZeneca’s estate including IT/OT, clinical platforms, and lab environments. Support Detection Engineering: Develop detection use cases to feed our detection-as-code pipeline and support detection ATT&CK coverage mapping, content tuning, and false-positive reduction, ensuring feedback loops from hunts and incidents continuously improve detection quality. Support GSOC/Incident Response: Provide real-time adversary context that is highly technical including kill-chain reconstruction, containment recommendations, and countermeasures, producing post-incident intelligence retrospectives and detection/architecture improvements. Operational and Executive Reporting: Produce daily threat intelligence highlights, threat actor/campaign profiles, quarterly threat briefings, and other ad hoc intelligence products, ensuring products include quantified risk narratives for senior leadership that also align findings to regulatory expectations and business impact. Tooling and Automation: Optimize integrations across TIP, SIEM, EDR, case management, and telemetry; manage indicator lifecycle, automate enrichment, and measure source fidelity/bias. External Engagement: Lead participation with sector bodies (e.g., H-ISAC), peer sharing groups, and government/industry partners; track and assess global events and rapidly translate into actionable enterprise guidance. Team Leadership and Development: Recruit, mentor, and grow a diverse team of CTI analysts; build career paths, training plans, and knowledge-sharing practices; foster a culture of technical excellence and clear, actionable communication. Minimum Qualifications Leadership and Strategic Impact: 10+ years in cyber threat intelligence, detection engineering, incident response, or related domains; 5+ years leading technical CTI teams in global enterprises. Demonstrated ability to set vision, influence strategy, and deliver outcomes tied to enterprise risk reduction. Decision Making and Accountability: Proven ownership of adversary-centric CTI programs that directly drive vulnerability prioritization, detections-as-code, hunts, and incident response. Comfortable making data-driven decisions with clear trade-offs and confidence levels. Technical Depth (ATT&CK Enterprise/ICS): Deep expertise mapping TTPs to MITRE ATT&CK, defining coverage strategies, an