Which Job? Security Analyst, Security Engineer, or IT Director of Desktop Support?

As the title suggests, a couple of internal positions have opened up where I am currently working as a System Engineer for $93K a year. Enterprise company with around 4K users, microsoft shop, Cisco UCS servers, Equallogic, EMC, and Nimble storage. I've got 20 years of experience but took 10 years off running my own businesses so my resume was a bit rusty so I ended up taking this position to get my feet wet again. This definitely isn't the company of my dreams and there are some real work life balance problems so I am mainly considering these options for what would be best for the NEXT company and position.

I recently passed my CISSP and am waiting for my endorsement and also have all of the other certs listed to the left. My original plan was to wait for that to come through, revamp my resume and look for a position in Security with a new company with hopefully a nice pay bump. However the security department where I am now is expanding with a security analyst and security engineer. Then the IT Director for Desktop Support / Helpdesk left last week so that position is open as well. I do have experience as a manager in my past (but not as a director) so I feel like I could have a good chance at getting any of the three positions.

Since I have been on the infrastructure side, the idea of going back to the Desktop Support / Helpdesk side even as a director makes me hesitate. I know a lot of this depends on what my goals are which are $$ and having a job I enjoy with some work life balance and especially getting out of the on call schedule that keeps me up more nights than I would like. My plans are longer term to end up in a CISO or CIO type role so the Director seems like the best option, but security is in such demand right now I don't know if I should focus there. So which would you choose?

A) Security Analyst - Which the manager tells me will be doing more data / audit artifact gathering, crunching excel spreadsheets, review logs etc

Security Engineer - Which will be more rolling out new security projects and implementing the same (but which may keep me in the on-call / working nights schedule)
C) IT Director of Desktop Support / Help Desk - Which will hopefully set me up for an IT Director of Infrastructure or VP at the next company
D) None of the above - Wait for my CISSP to become final and look for a Security position with another company with better work/life balance / environment.

Thanks for your input!

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Comments

TheFORCE

Go for the director role then move to the next company at a director position in IT Security

yoba222

Definitely director. Yeah help desk, but it's only temporary until you can move to a role closer to CISO/CIO.

snokerpoker

I'd go with the engineer role. But I'm also at a point where I want to stay as a technical resource more than a manager. The manager role seems like a really good fit for you.

eric.thomas

I would do either the Security Analyst or Security Engineer. I am more of a hands on type of guy and like to know what all is going on.

Danielm7

I'm curious what the director of desktop would do. We have a lot more users but have a manager of desktop engineering, who reports the the director of all of IT. I guess just another layer of management? I'd take that if you really want to get into management, but otherwise I'd go security engineer, unless you really want the analyst position.

So, in the end, whatever you want? hah. Good luck!

DatabaseHead

Depends

Director of Desktop Support is weird, that's a team lead role. Any seasoned IT / Business professional ill see through that over embellished title right away.

Security Engineer if you are up for the challenge if not security analyst, learn the ropes then move into an engineering position or something higher level.

Just my two cents.

BTW grats on the CISSP, big win.

Kyrak

Danielm7 wrote: »

I'm curious what the director of desktop would do. We have a lot more users but have a manager of desktop engineering, who reports the the director of all of IT. I guess just another layer of management? I'd take that if you really want to get into management, but otherwise I'd go security engineer, unless you really want the analyst position.

So, in the end, whatever you want? hah. Good luck!

Well I went back and checked and the official title is Director - IT Operations and it is sort of a strange situation because he only has one manager underneath him who then has 11 desktop support engineers across the country under him. So it isn't your classic Director with 5 managers reporting to him arrangement currently. I did express my interest to the VP about the Director position and he mentioned that he wasn't sure if he was going to immediately fill the position but his vision was to pull the operations tasks from the core teams, Servers, Networks, and Telecom, so they could focus on projects and optimization of their systems more effectively. We are going to have a meeting mid July to discuss and he sounded positive about including me in the applicant pool. I also got another call from a recruiter about an IT Security Project Manager which sounded like a great fit so we will see if that goes anywhere too.

DatabaseHead wrote: »

BTW grats on the CISSP, big win.

Thanks! I am super happy about that one. I really didn't want to start looking until my endorsement came back and I revamped my resume with a security focus, but these internal positions just popped up and seemed like a good move. My thought is even with the CISSP, it will be harder to get a security position without dedicated security experience so an intra-company move into security will give me that without a pay cut most likely. But if my long term goal is upper management, then I have to go through a Director position at some point so if I can make that move now then I should.

volfkhat

You should probably consider All options....
including the one that brings you the most long-term satisfaction.

636-555-3226

I'm biased as I'm in infosec, but my opinion is that security is better in the long term. Director of Help Desk doesn't really seem like it goes very far in my opinion and experience. I certainly wouldn't expect someone to take a jump from director of help desk to director of security role. My preference is to keep security in the hands of security people. job titles/descriptions vary from company to company, but again in my experience security engineer is a step up from security analyst. i'd think most analysts want to take that next step up to engineering role, so why start at the ground floor if you have the option of starting a level up?

Danielm7

I'd be leery of that director position with the added clarification. As someone else mentioned I think most interviewers would see that as an inflated title. My first question would be how many direct reports you had and about the structure. When the answer was 1, from 1 dept, I'd probably dismiss the title.

Seem to be bouncing all over the place with options, I'd figure out what YOU want to do long term and build a path there. Right now you're looking at management, sec analyst, sec engineer and PM roles. I know you want to do CISO or something related long term.

Have they even talked about pay on any of these roles?

Repo Man

The title is weird but I have seen a Director of End User Support (service desk / desktop) at every large company I have been at. I think this is much more common than what people here are saying.

Kyrak

Update.

I finally had my meeting with the VP and I had decided before the meeting that the Security Engineer was a better long term move for me. The idea of getting stuck in the manager / Director of Help Desk arena sounded pretty grim (constant SLA's, RCA's and KPI's) and I thought heading down that path might be hard to correct in the future. I feel that the market for security will do nothing but grow and with my CISSP and a few years of dedicated security experience under my belt I'll be well positioned for the future. I was able to get the blessing of the VP to proceed along with my current Director and also the Manager of the Security team so I think this is a done deal at this point!

We just lost a team member last week so I will probably have to wait for them to backfill our team but I should be in the new role within 6-8 weeks. I'm exited to move onto a new challenge and am most excited to get out of the up all night maintenance window life.

Thanks everyone for the input!

Danielm7

Smart move, and congrats on the upcoming new role!

labscloud

Congrats man! Sounds like you made the choice best for YOU!

DatabaseHead

Smart move, nicely played. Keep us posted!