Vulnerability Management Lead

Role Summary

The Vulnerability Management Lead (L3) is responsible for leading enterprise-wide vulnerability management programs, vulnerability assessments, risk prioritization, remediation governance, exposure management, and cybersecurity risk reduction initiatives across on-premises, cloud, endpoint, network, server, database, and application environments.

The role serves as the highest technical escalation point for vulnerability management operations and works closely with Infrastructure, Cloud, Application, SOC, Security Architecture, and Compliance teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead enterprise vulnerability management lifecycle.
• Define vulnerability management strategy, policies, and standards.
• Establish vulnerability SLAs and remediation governance.
• Drive risk reduction initiatives across the organization.
• Develop vulnerability management maturity roadmap.
• Present cybersecurity risk posture to leadership teams.
• Manage enterprise vulnerability scanning platforms.
• Conduct authenticated and unauthenticated scans.
• Perform internal and external vulnerability assessments.
• Assess servers, endpoints, network devices, databases, cloud workloads, and applications.
• Validate critical and high-risk vulnerabilities.
• Perform vulnerability triage and risk assessment.
• Prioritize remediation based on CVSS score, exploit availability, business impact, threat intelligence, asset criticality, and regulatory impact.
• Identify vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild.
• Maintain enterprise risk register.
• Coordinate remediation activities across technology teams.
• Track vulnerability closure and SLA compliance.
• Conduct remediation reviews and validation testing.
• Manage exception and risk acceptance processes.
• Escalate overdue critical vulnerabilities to leadership.
• Correlate vulnerabilities with active threat intelligence.
• Identify exploited vulnerabilities and attack paths.
• Support threat-informed vulnerability prioritization.
• Perform attack surface assessments.
• Support cyber threat hunting initiatives.
• Develop executive vulnerability dashboards.
• Track vulnerability KPIs and KRIs.
• Report remediation trends and compliance posture.
• Produce weekly, monthly, and quarterly executive reports.
• Automate vulnerability management processes.
• Integrate scanners with ServiceNow, Jira, SIEM, CMDB, and threat intelligence platforms.
• Build automated remediation workflows.
• Develop scripts using PowerShell and Python.
• Support internal and external audits and security compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001, NIST, PCI-DSS, SOC2, HIPAA, and GDPR.
• Lead vulnerability remediation evidence collection.
• Conduct security control assessments.

Required Technical Skills

• Vulnerability management platforms: Qualys VMDR, Tenable Nessus, Tenable Security Center, Rapid7 InsightVM, Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management.
• Operating systems: Windows Server, Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu, CentOS), Unix.
• Infrastructure: Active Directory, VMware, Citrix, storage systems, network devices.
• Security technologies: EDR/XDR platforms, SIEM solutions, threat intelligence, endpoint security, patch management solutions.
• Cloud platforms: Microsoft Azure, AWS, hybrid cloud environments.
• Automation: PowerShell, Python, REST APIs, ServiceNow integration, Terraform, Ansible.

Preferred Certifications

• Security: CISSP, CISM, GIAC Vulnerability Assessment (GVA), GSEC, CEH, CompTIA Security+.
• Vendor: Qualys Certified Specialist, Tenable Certified Operator, Microsoft SC-200, Microsoft AZ-500, AWS Security Specialty.

Leadership and Soft Skills

• Vulnerability governance, executive reporting, stakeholder management, risk management, program leadership, audit management, team mentoring, vendor coordination, communication and presentation skills.

Ideal Candidate Profile

A senior cybersecurity professional with 7-12+ years of experience in vulnerability management, risk assessment, security operations, and infrastructure security, with strong expertise in Qualys VMDR, Tenable, Rapid7, Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, vulnerability scanning and validation, remediation governance, cloud security, ServiceNow and CMDB integration, threat intelligence-based prioritization, executive dashboarding, and security compliance and audit support.

Key Deliverables Expected from an L3 Lead

• Reduce critical vulnerabilities within SLA targets.
• Improve enterprise vulnerability compliance above 95%.
• Establish risk-based vulnerability prioritization.
• Automate scan-to-remediation workflows.
• Provide executive-level cyber risk visibility.
• Lead enterprise exposure management and vulnerability governance programs.