Cyber Defense Analyst

Today’s world is fueled by vast amounts of information. Data is more valuable than ever before. Protecting data and information systems is central to doing business, and everyone in EY Information Security has a critical role to play. Join a global team of almost 950 people who collaborate to support the business of EY by protecting EY and client information assets! Our Information Security professionals enable EY to work securely and deliver secure products and services, as well as detect and quickly respond to security events as they happen. Together, the efforts of our dedicated team helps protect the EY brand and build client trust.

Within Information Security we blend risk strategy, digital identity, cyber defense, application security and technology solutions as we consider the entire security lifecycle. You will join a team of hardworking, security-focused individuals dedicated to supporting, protecting and enabling the business through innovative, secure solutions that provide speed to market and business value.

The opportunity

As an Attack Surface Validation & Exposure Engineer in the Attack Surface Management function, you will serve as a strategic contributor within EY’s Vulnerability Management and Exposure Assessment capability, with a deep focus on attack path discovery, scalable vulnerability detection, and exposure validation through self-engineered solutions. Operating with a high degree of autonomy, you will play a senior role in developing EY’s strategy to discovering and managing vulnerabilities to keep pace with the evolving threat landscape. This role is designed for an experienced practitioner who understands that vulnerabilities on EY digital assets represent the firm’s greatest source of exposure as their rate of exploitation increases exponentially. The candidate will develop solutions to discover and exploit vulnerabilities at scale within the EY environment.

You will partner closely with partners in the Red Team, Exposure Assessment, Vulnerability Intelligence, Cyber Threat Intelligence and Cyber Threat Detection to identify the greatest areas of susceptibility and emerging threats and build solutions to them.

Your key responsibilities

• Design and engineer automated attack‑path discovery and validation capabilities
• Build scalable vulnerability detection and verification pipelines that combine enterprise scanning sources with custom validation logic
• Develop controlled exploitation and exploit‑chaining workflows to safely demonstrate real attacker outcomes
• Operationalize continuous offensive validation by engineering testing routines that can run with minimal human prompting
• Fuse Vulnerability Intelligence and Cyber Threat Intelligence into detection and prioritization—tracking exploit maturity/availability, active exploitation signals, and technique trends, etc
• Produce high‑fidelity deliverables that enable remediation and decisioning: reproducible evidence, attack‑path narratives, severity/exploitability rationale, compensating control notes, and clear remediation/mitigation recommendations
• Partner across Red Team, Exposure Assessment, Threat Detection, and VM stakeholders

Skills and attributes for success

• Expert attention to detail
• Demonstrated ability to thinking critically
• Interest in engineering creative solutions to complex issues
• Flexibility and comfortability pivoting between diverse environments
• Exceptional communication and rapport building skills
• Extensive experience augmenting offensive security

To qualify for the role you must have

• Minimum combined 8 years of experience in vulnerability management, exposure management, offensive security, and security engineering
• Demonstrated experience analyzing vulnerability and security posture data
• Deep understanding of attack paths, misconfigurations, and control failures that lead to material risk
• Proven ability to build scalable solutions to vulnerability and exposure challenges
• Experience operating at a strategic level, balancing technical depth with organizational risk context
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to evaluate large volumes of data to influence solution development
• Excellent communication skills, with comfort engaging senior stakeholders and security leadership
• Ability to manage competing priorities and operate independently in a complex, global environment

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Experience leveraging AI to conduct exposure assessments

What we look for

We are looking for a senior analyst that can operate autonomously and bring new, strategic approaches to discovering and evaluating the firm’s exposure to vulnerabilities to improve the overall security posture. We are seeking a seasoned analyst to improve the organization’s ability to reduce the attack surface while enabling the business. The ideal candidate will seek to improve others while continuously learning and identifying ways to strengthen the organization.