About Qualtrics
At Qualtrics, we create software the world’s best brands use to deliver exceptional frontline experiences, build high-performing teams, and design products people love. We are the creators and stewards of the Experience Management category serving over 18K clients globally. When you join one of our teams, you’ll be part of a nimble group that’s empowered to set aggressive goals and move fast to achieve them.
Role Overview
Qualtrics is looking for a Senior Lead of CDU Operations to lead the (Kraków) team’s daily operations that are responsible for detecting, triaging, and responding to security threats across our global environment. You'll own the day-to-day operations of your team, build and mentor a high-performing team of analysts, and continuously mature our detection and response capabilities to keep pace with an evolving threat landscape. This is a hands-on leadership role — you'll support in guiding strategy while staying close enough to work alongside the team and manage incidents.
Responsibilities
- Lead and manage the Security Operations Center, including 24x7 monitoring, detection, triage, and incident response functions.
- Hire, coach, and develop a team of CDU analysts and incident responders; build career paths and a strong on-call/rotation culture.
- Conduct 1-on-1 technical coaching, run mock incident drills, and build skill matrices for junior analysts.
- Own CDU metrics and KPIs (MTTD, MTTR, alert volume/fidelity, coverage) and report on program health to security leadership.
- Drive continuous improvement of detection logic, playbooks, and automation in partnership with detection engineering and threat intelligence teams.
- Serve as an escalation point and incident commander for high-severity security incidents, coordinating cross-functional response.
- Partner with Threat Intelligence, Detection Engineering, IT, Legal, and Product/Engineering teams to close gaps in visibility and response.
- Manage relationships with any outsourced/MSSP or co-managed CDU partners, ensuring SLAs and quality standards are met.
- Evaluate and help select CDU tooling (SIEM, SOAR, EDR, XDR, ticketing) and drive adoption of automation to reduce analyst toil (Crowdstrike, Daylight, Wiz, Splunk, Arnica, AWS).
- Own CDU-related audit, compliance, and customer trust requirements (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP as applicable).
- Build and maintain incident response runbooks, tabletop exercises, and post-incident review processes.
- Participate in an on-call rotation for incidents and provide leadership presence during major security events.
Perks and Benefits
- Annual Leave: 20 or 26 annual leave days per annum plus an additional day for each year of service (to a max of 5).
- Private Medical Insurance: Luxmed health & dental cover for you and your dependants.
- Commuter Assistance: Up to the value of 80 PLN net a month for public transport.
- Savings Plan: Two company saving plans provided by Nationale Nederlanden: Employee Capital Plan (PPK) & Employee Saving Plan (PPO).
- QED PROGRAM: Qualtrics Engineer Development (QED) program: support, engineering learning activities up to 10% of engineering work time each quarter.
- Wellness: Up to the value of 800PLN gross per quarter can be reimbursed for a variety of wellness activities via our dedicated platform Forma.
- A choice of Multispot cards available.
- Our employee assistance program with Unum provides counselling and wellbeing support to all employees.
- Experience bonus: 7000 PLN gross per annum.
- Group Life & Income Protection Insurance.
- Glasses/Contact lenses Reimbursement.
- Free breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and drinks for everyone in the office.
- Tax-deductible expenses (up to 50% depending on role).
- The Qualtrics Hybrid Work Model: We all gather in the office three days a week; Mondays and Thursdays, plus one day selected by your organizational leader.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years in security operations, incident response, or a related security discipline, including 4+ years in a people-management or team-lead role.
- Demonstrated experience running or scaling a 24x7 CDU function, whether in-house, hybrid, or via MSSP oversight.
- Strong technical grounding in SIEM/SOAR platforms, EDR/XDR, network and cloud security monitoring, and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
- Experience leading incident response for significant security events, including coordination with legal, communications, and executive stakeholders.
- Track record of hiring, developing, and retaining security talent.
- Excellent communication skills — able to translate technical detail into risk-based language for non-technical leaders.
- Experience with cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and SaaS security operations.
Nice to Have
- Experience in a SaaS or enterprise software company handling customer data at scale.
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks relevant to Qualtrics' customer base (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, GDPR).
- Relevant certifications (CISSP, GCIH, GCFA, CISM, or similar).
- Experience building or maturing threat detection and threat hunting programs.
- Background in scripting/automation (Python, PowerShell) to support SOAR workflows.
