Sr. Director, Security Operations Leader

**This role is hybrid Tuesday - Thursday in the Dallas or Louisville, KY areas.** 

As the most senior security operations leader within Yum! Brands, the Senior Director of Security Operations will report directly to the Global CISO and lead the enterprise-wide function responsible for proactive threat detection, incident response, security monitoring, and operational resilience.

This role has global accountability for the design, execution, and evolution of Yum!’s 24x7 Security Operations Center (SOC)—including threat intelligence, detection engineering, threat hunting, and vulnerability management. The Senior Director will define strategic direction, optimize tooling and operations, and lead a high-performing global team of ~20. This is a VP-caliber role in scope and visibility, with direct impact on Yum!’s enterprise risk management, brand integrity, and operational continuity.

Primary Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define and drive Yum!’s global SOC strategy and operational roadmap, ensuring alignment with enterprise risk priorities and business growth objectives.
• Serve as the executive escalation point for cyber threats and security incidents, coordinating C-suite briefings and leading post-incident executive reviews.
• Lead a team of ~30 [SE1] global professionals across SOC operations, incident response, threat intelligence, vulnerability management, and engineering.
• Monitor and interpret global SOC trends, adversary tactics, and emerging technologies, identifying strategic inflection points and proactively evolving Yum!’s detection and response capabilities.
• Security Operations Oversight
• Own and mature Yum!’s 24/7 global SOC, ensuring rapid threat detection, alert triage, root cause analysis, and containment across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments.
• Establish and maintain robust playbooks, automation, and coordination protocols for end-to-end incident response, business continuity, and regulatory readiness.
• Lead internal threat hunting and intelligence fusion efforts, integrating commercial, open-source, and internal telemetry to anticipate and disrupt threats.
• Manage Yum!’s enterprise-wide vulnerability management lifecycle, ensuring timely prioritization, remediation, and risk communication across stakeholder groups.

Enterprise Integration & Communication

• Act as the primary conduit between security operations and executive leadership, translating technical threats into actionable business impact analysis.
• Build and maintain collaborative relationships across Digital, Technology, Legal, Brand, and Franchise leadership to embed security operations into Yum!’s culture and decision-making.
• Lead tabletop exercises and executive crisis simulations across brands, functions, and geographies to ensure global preparedness.

Technology, Partnerships & Measurement

• Oversee the performance and evolution of SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, vulnerability scanning, and threat intel platforms.
• Manage strategic MSSP and MDR partnerships; drive vendor accountability and ensure best-in-class SLAs and detection efficacy.
• Define, track, and report on SOC KPIs and KRIs, including MTTD, MTTR, detection coverage, operational maturity, and service delivery effectiveness.

Qualifications: 

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Cybersecurity, Business Administration, or a related technical field is required.
• Master’s degree in a related discipline is strongly preferred, particularly in cybersecurity leadership, technology management, or enterprise risk.

Experience

• 10+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity, including at least 5 years in senior leadership roles overseeing global Security Operations Center (SOC), threat detection, incident response, or threat intelligence functions.[KG2] [SE3] 
• Proven track record of leading high-performing security operations teams, developing SOC strategy, and driving operational readiness across global or franchise-based enterprises.
• Demonstrated ability to manage and respond to complex cybersecurity incidents at scale, providing executive-level visibility and business impact analysis.
• Extensive experience with security platforms and frameworks including SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, MITRE ATT&CK, NIST CSF, and cloud-native security tooling (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Skilled in managing MSSPs and external threat service providers, driving vendor performance, optimizing cost and efficiency, and ensuring aligned threat coverage.
• Strong ability to translate technical threat data into clear, risk-informed narratives for business stakeholders, including C-suite and board audiences.

Certifications

• At least one of the following active certifications is required:
  • CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)
  • CISM (Certified Information Security Manager)
  • CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor)
  • CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner)
• Additional certifications are preferred, including:
  • **Technical**: GIAC/GSEC, GCIA, GCIH, OSCP
  • **Risk & Governance**: CRISC, CGEIT, CIPP
  • **Program & Process Management**: PMP, ITIL
  • **Financial/Compliance**: CPA, CA

Salary Range: $230,000 - $270,000 annually + bonus eligibility and stock-based compensation. This is the expected salary range for this position. Ultimately, in determining pay, we'll consider the successful candidate’s location, experience, and other job-related factors. 

The Yum! Brands story is simple. We have the four distinctive, relevant and easy global brands – KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and The Habit Burger Grill -- born from the hopes and dreams, ambitions and grit of passionate entrepreneurs. And we want more of this to create our future!

As the world’s largest restaurant company we have a clear and compelling mission: to build the world’s most love, trusted and fastest-growing restaurant brands. The key and not-so-secret ingredient in our recipe for growth is our unrivaled talent and culture, which fuels our results.

We’re looking for talented, motivated, visionary and team-oriented leaders to join us as we elevate and personalize the customer experience across our 48,000 restaurants, operating in 145 countries and territories around the world!

We put pizza, chicken and tacos in the hands of customers through customized ordering, unique delivery approaches, app experiences, and click and collect services and consumer data analytics creating unique customer dining experiences – and we are only getting started.

Employees may work for a single brand and potentially grow to support all company-owned brands depending on their role. Regardless of where they work, as a company opening an average of 8 restaurants a day worldwide, the growth opportunities are endless. Taco Bell has been named of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in the World by Fast Company; Pizza Hut delivers more pizzas than any other pizza company in the world and KFC’s still use its 75-year-old finger lickin’ good recipe including secret herbs and spices to hand-bread its chicken every day.

Yum! and its brands have offices in Chicago, IL, Louisville KY, Irvine, CA, Plano, TX and other markets around the world. We don’t just say we are a great place to work – our commitments to the world and our employees show it. Yum! has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index and ranked among the top 100 Best Corporate Citizens by Corporate Responsibility Magazine in addition to being named to the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. Our employees work in an environment where the value of “believe in all people” is lived every day, enjoying benefits including but not limited to: 4 weeks’ vacation PLUS holidays, sick leave and 2 paid days to volunteer at the cause of their choice and a dollar-for-dollar matching gift program; generous parental leave; competitive benefits including medical, dental, vision and life insurance as well as a 6% 401k match – all encompassed in Yum!’s world-famous recognition culture.