Principal Technical Program Manager, Cyber Defense

About the role

This role reports to the SVP, Cyber Defense. It is a hybrid position requiring regular virtual work as well as in-person attendance at an assigned TransUnion office location for at least two days a week.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a key leader and strategic partner to the Head of Cyber Defense, increasing operational rigor, learning velocity, and executive effectiveness across the organization.
• Build and own the Cyber Defense closed-loop learning system, connecting incidents, near-misses, detections, and exercises into a continuous improvement engine that drives durable changes across people, process, and technology.
• Own the post-incident review framework and cadence, driving blameless, high-quality reviews focused on systemic improvement while tracking remediation actions to closure.
• Define, implement, and evolve Cyber Defense operational metrics, including detection effectiveness and coverage, response quality and speed, and learning throughput, ensuring metrics drive leadership decisions rather than reporting alone.
• Operate the Detection Council as a structured decision-making forum, owning agendas, materials, follow-through, prioritization of detection gaps, strategic coverage decisions, and cross-team alignment.
• Lead critical cross-functional Cyber Defense initiatives end-to-end, managing milestones, risks, dependencies, execution blockers, and escalations with clear options and trade-offs.
• Deliver clear, structured executive communications on Cyber Defense health, translating detection posture, incident trends, program progress, and decisions needed into executive-relevant narratives.
• Build and maintain the Cyber Defense wins and maturity narrative by capturing key wins, improvements driven by learning, and maturity progress over time.
• Improve leadership operating rhythm and meeting hygiene by driving clear agendas, documented decisions, and accountable follow-ups across Cyber Defense leadership forums.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in Technical Program Management, Security Operations, or Engineering Program Management, with demonstrated ability to operate at both strategic and execution levels in complex, cross-functional environments.
• Experience working in or alongside Detection & Response, SOC, or Reliability/SRE teams, with sufficient technical depth to engage credibly with detection engineers, incident responders, and threat intelligence analysts.
• Proven track record building operating systems, including cadences, metrics frameworks, feedback loops, and governance structures that drive measurable organizational improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to own and run post-incident or post-mortem review programs focused on systemic learning, action tracking, and durable improvement rather than one-off remediation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field required; advanced degree preferred.
• Cyber Defense, SOC (Security Operations Center), Detection Engineering, SIRT (Security Incident Response Team), and Threat Intelligence operating concepts.
• Incident response and post-incident review frameworks, including blameless review practices, systemic learning, remediation tracking, and action closure management.
• Operational metrics design and governance, including detection effectiveness, detection coverage, response quality, response speed, and learning throughput.
• Cross-functional program management practices, including milestone planning, dependency management, risk escalation, stakeholder alignment, and executive decision support.
• MITRE ATT&CK and detection operations concepts sufficient to partner effectively with technical security teams.

Skills

• Cyber Defense, SOC, or Detection Engineering program management experience.
• Prior Chief of Staff or leadership-adjacent experience in a technical organization.
• Experience building knowledge management or organizational learning systems that improve how teams capture, share, and apply lessons learned.
• Financial services, fintech, or similarly regulated enterprise experience.
• PMP, CISSP, or equivalent program/security management credentials.