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Incident Commander Jobs (NOW HIRING)

$125K - $195K/yr

This individual acts as the central command point during major incidents, ensuring rapid triage, cross-team coordination, effective communication, and structured post-incident analysis. This role ...

Assists Incident Commander and HAZMAT Coordinator in assessing hazardous or potentially hazardous conditions and rapidly identifies the immediate hazards that may affect the public, response ...

Assists Incident Commander and HAZMAT Coordinator in assessing hazardous or potentially hazardous conditions and rapidly identifies the immediate hazards that may affect the public, response ...

Responsibilities : • Lead incidents as a senior incident commander in the on-call rotation, and serve as the escalation backstop when a case rises above the responders on call. • Own the 24/7 ...

Assists Incident Commander and HAZMAT Coordinator in assessing hazardous or potentially hazardous conditions and rapidly identifies the immediate hazards that may affect the public, response ...

This role owns incident command from detection through resolution, directs cross-functional response across Security, Engineering, IT, Legal, Compliance, Communications, Facilities, HR, and Executive ...

This role owns incident command from detection through resolution, directs cross-functional response across Security, Engineering, IT, Legal, Compliance, Communications, Facilities, HR, and Executive ...

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Incident Commander information

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$31K

$53.5K

$61K

How much do incident commander jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 10, 2026, the average yearly pay for incident commander in the United States is $53,456.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $59,000.00 and $59,500.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What jobs make $3,000 a day?

Incident Commanders in high-stakes industries such as oil and gas, aerospace, or large-scale emergency management can earn around $3,000 or more per day, especially with extensive experience, certifications, and working in remote or demanding environments. These roles often require strong leadership, crisis management skills, and the ability to coordinate complex operations under pressure.

What is an Incident Commander?

An Incident Commander is the individual responsible for managing and directing response efforts during an emergency or critical incident, such as a natural disaster, cybersecurity breach, or other crisis. They oversee the incident response team, make key decisions, and coordinate communications between agencies or departments to ensure a swift and effective resolution. The Incident Commander is typically designated at the start of an incident and remains in charge until the situation is resolved or command is transferred. Their leadership is crucial for maintaining order, safety, and clear lines of authority during high-stress situations.

What does an Incident Commander do?

An Incident Commander is responsible for managing emergency response operations, coordinating resources, and making strategic decisions during incidents such as fires, accidents, or disasters. They typically oversee communication, ensure safety protocols are followed, and may hold certifications like ICS (Incident Command System) to effectively lead teams in high-pressure situations.

What are the 5 C's of incident command?

The 5 C's of incident command are Command, Control, Communication, Coordination, and Collaboration. These principles help incident commanders organize response efforts effectively, ensuring clear leadership and efficient resource management during emergencies.

What Are Incident Commander Jobs?

Incident commander (IC) jobs are positions of responsibility and authority to carry out emergency response plans. Incident commanders play a vital role in emergency response for natural disasters, acts of violence, and other emergencies, such as fires and bomb threats. More recently, the information technology (IT) sector adopted the IC role to manage disaster recovery and business continuity in the event of a computer systems failure or data breach. Whether in IT or other emergency response situations, as IC your duties include allocating resources, minimizing fallout, and supervising operations.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as an Incident Commander, and why are they important?

To thrive as an Incident Commander, you need strong leadership, decision-making abilities, and a deep understanding of emergency response protocols, usually backed by relevant training and certifications like ICS (Incident Command System). Familiarity with emergency management software, communication systems, and situational awareness tools is crucial. Exceptional communication, calm under pressure, and the ability to coordinate diverse teams are standout soft skills in this role. These skills and qualities are vital to ensure effective, organized, and timely responses to critical incidents, minimizing harm and restoring normalcy.

How does an Incident Commander typically interact with other teams during a major incident?

During a major incident, the Incident Commander serves as the central point of communication, coordinating efforts between technical teams, management, and stakeholders. They facilitate regular updates, assign clear responsibilities, and ensure that everyone is aligned on priorities and next steps. This role often requires quick decision-making, clear documentation, and the ability to manage high-pressure situations while fostering collaboration across departments to resolve issues efficiently.

What is the highest salary for incident manager?

The highest salary for an Incident Commander can reach over $150,000 annually, especially for those with extensive experience, certifications, and in high-demand industries such as IT or emergency management. Salaries vary based on location, industry, and level of responsibility, with senior roles and those in large organizations earning the most.

What is the difference between Incident Commander vs Emergency Response Coordinator?

AspectIncident CommanderEmergency Response Coordinator
CertificationsICS certifications, First Aid/CPREmergency management certifications, First Aid/CPR
Work EnvironmentEmergency scenes, incident sitesEmergency planning offices, coordination centers
Employer & IndustryPublic safety, fire departments, disaster responseGovernment agencies, NGOs, corporate safety teams
Primary RoleLead incident response, make tactical decisionsCoordinate response efforts, plan emergency procedures

While both roles focus on emergency situations, the Incident Commander is responsible for leading on-site incident response and making tactical decisions. The Emergency Response Coordinator typically oversees planning and coordination efforts, ensuring effective response strategies are in place. Both roles require similar certifications and are vital in emergency management, but their day-to-day responsibilities and work environments differ.

What cities are hiring for Incident Commander jobs? Cities with the most Incident Commander job openings:
What are the most commonly searched types of Incident Commander jobs? The most popular types of Incident Commander jobs are:
Who are the top companies hiring for Incident Commander jobs? The top employers for Incident Commander jobs are:
What states have the most Incident Commander jobs? States with the most job openings for Incident Commander jobs include:
Infographic showing various Incident Commander job openings in the United States as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 100% Full Time. Highlights an 100% In-person job distribution, with an average salary of $53,456 per year, or $25.7 per hour.
Senior Incident Manager

Senior Incident Manager

Lambda

On-site, Remote

$125K - $195K/yr

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, Retirement, PTO

Re-posted 6 days ago


Job description

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.
If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us.
We are seeking a Senior Incident Manager to lead critical incident response across our AI data center infrastructure. This role is responsible for coordinating rapid resolution of service-impacting events, improving operational resilience, and driving incident management best practices across infrastructure, networking, platform engineering, and data center operations.
Role Overview
The Senior Incident Manager is responsible for leading the end-to-end lifecycle of operational incidents impacting AI infrastructure and data center services. This individual acts as the central command point during major incidents, ensuring rapid triage, cross-team coordination, effective communication, and structured post-incident analysis.
This role requires deep operational expertise in high-availability infrastructure, large-scale GPU clusters, networking, and cloud platforms, along with strong leadership and communication skills.
What You'll Do
Incident Leadership
  • Lead the response to critical (SEV-1 / SEV-2) incidents impacting AI infrastructure, GPU clusters, networking, storage, and data center operations.
  • Serve as the Incident Commander during major outages, coordinating engineering, networking, facilities, and vendor teams.
  • Act as the liaison between leadership and external teams during incidents / post-incidents to provide updates and status summaries.
  • Establish clear incident timelines, triage actions, and resolution plans.

Incident Management Operations
  • Own the incident response lifecycle including:
    • Assisting Technical Triage
    • Escalation
    • Coordination
    • Resolution
      Post-incident review
  • Ensure timely and accurate communication with internal stakeholders and leadership.
  • Maintain incident response documentation and operational playbooks.
  • Conduct analysis on incidents and identify patterns / trends for improvement in response and systems reliability.
  • Work in an On-Call Rotation to respond to, lead, and coordinate incidents

Cross-Functional Coordination
  • Work closely with:
    • Data center operations
    • Infrastructure engineering & operations
    • Network engineering
    • Platform reliability engineering
    • Security operations
    • Hardware and facility vendors
  • Drive alignment during outages involving multiple infrastructure layers.

Post-Incident Analysis & Continuous Improvement
  • Lead post-incident reviews (PIRs) and root cause analysis. Identify systemic reliability gaps and implement corrective actions.
  • Track incident metrics including MTTR, MTTD, and incident recurrence rates.

Operational Excellence
  • Improve incident response processes, escalation paths, and tooling by working with technical support and engineering teams..
  • Contribute to runbooks, operational standards, and reliability frameworks.
  • Support implementation of automation and observability improvements.

Communication & Reporting
  • Provide executive-level incident summaries and reports.
  • Deliver clear, concise updates during active incidents.
  • Maintain incident dashboards and operational health reporting.

You
  • 8+ years experience in incident management, site reliability engineering, or infrastructure operations
  • Experience managing incidents in large-scale distributed infrastructure environments
  • Strong understanding of:
    • Data center operations
    • GPU compute clusters
      Networking and storage infrastructure
    • Cloud or hybrid infrastructure platforms
  • Proven ability to lead high-pressure incident response situations
  • Experience with incident management frameworks (ITIL, SRE, or equivalent)
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
  • Experience with incident tracking and monitoring tools such as:
    • PagerDuty
    • ServiceNow
    • Jira
    • Datadog
    • Prometheus / Grafana

Nice to Have
  • Experience operating AI or HPC infrastructure
  • Background in SRE, infrastructure engineering, or data center operations
  • Familiarity with high-density GPU environments (NVIDIA clusters, InfiniBand networks)
  • Experience with hyperscale or colocation data center environments
  • Knowledge of automation and incident response tooling
  • Knowledge of and experience with Incident command system (ICS)
  • Experience in leading and developing incident command from stractch

Key Competencies
  • Incident Command & Leadership
  • Operational Decision Making
  • Cross-Team Coordination
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Crisis Communication
  • Infrastructure Reliability

What Success Looks Like in This Role
  • Reduced Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) for critical incidents
  • Improved cross-team incident coordination
  • High-quality post-incident reviews and corrective actions
  • Increased infrastructure reliability and operational maturity

Salary Range Information
The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.
About Lambda
  • Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast
  • Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove
  • We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG
  • Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers
  • We offer generous cash & equity compensation
  • Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents
  • Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles
  • 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)
  • Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use

Equal Opportunity Employer
Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.