Staff Security Engineer (Detection)

reagroup; City of Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

REA Group is seeking a Staff Security Engineer to lead detection engineering within our Detection & Response team. You will shape standards, drive data-flow patterns, and guide detection and automation efforts.

The role involves cross-team collaboration with Product, Platform and Engineering to deliver scalable security detections. You will configure the detection platform, define detection patterns, and mentor peers while pursuing innovative AI-assisted tooling to improve coverage and reduce

Qualifications

• Ability to define detection architectures and patterns across platforms.
• Strong understanding of cloud and application architectures, including logging and monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Identify and lead long-term detection and response initiatives.
• Configure and operate the detection platform and data flows.
• Define detection patterns and validate high-fidelity detections.
• Build automated pipelines, tests and quality gates.
• Analyse security events and evolve threat detection.
• Investigate alerts and coordinate incident response.
• Produce automated playbooks for containment and response.
• Mentor team members and share knowledge.

Skills

Detection engineering

Cloud architecture

Threat hunting

Incident response

Logging & monitoring

Automation

Mentoring

Tools

Detection platform

AI-assisted tooling

Job description

We're taking an engineering-led approach to security operations, building internal capability and technical depth. You'll provide technical accountability for REA's detection-engineering capability and help shape how we evolve detection and automation Permanent role based either onsite in Melbourne or Sydney as well as open to remote in other locations

We're REA

With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you're at on your property journey, we're here to help with every step - whether that's finding or financing your next home.

Our people are the key to our success. At the heart of everything we do, is a thriving culture centred around high performance and care. We are purpose driven and collaborative, which drives innovation and our ability to make a real impact. As such, we're proud to have been named one of Australia's Best Workplaces four times since 2021 - including third place in 2025 - plus Best Workplace for Women in 2023 and Best Workplace in Technology in 2024 and 2025. These listings are testament to every person who helps make REA a great place to work.

Where the team fits in

The Detection & Response team helps REA identify, investigate and respond to cyber threats across our environment. The team monitors security signals, validates alerts, investigates suspicious activity and leads or supports coordinated incident response, including technical investigation and containment in partnership with engineering teams. With an increasing focus on detection and response engineering, the team continually strengthens REA's ability to spot threats earlier, reduce the impact of incidents and learn from events to improve our security posture.

What the role is all about

The Staff Security Engineer is a key role in the Detections & Response team that will provide technical accountability for REA's detection engineering capability within our purpose-built detection platform. You'll shape standards, technical direction and the capability model across data flows, detection requirements, testing and response automation. Working within our strategic goals, you'll partner with the team to prioritise and sequence the work that delivers them, bringing deep technical expertise to guide how we get there.

Day to day of the job

• Identify, initiate and lead long-term, cross-team initiatives that strengthen REA's detection and response capability, aligning stakeholders and driving delivery in partnership with Product, Platform and Engineering teams.
• Configure and operate the detection platform and its data flows, including log ingestion, transformation, alert enrichment and response automation, while shaping the technical standards and patterns used to define and validate detections.
• Define detection patterns and technical approaches to identify malicious activity across our environment, and lead the review, tuning and validation of high-fidelity detections and correlation logic that improve coverage, reduce false positives and enable the team to scale detection engineering capabilities.
• Build and maintain automated pipelines, infrastructure, tests and quality gates that validate detections and protect against configuration drift, regressions and coverage gaps.
• Analyse security events and logs to identify malicious activity, patterns and emerging attack techniques during investigations and proactive threat hunting
• Assess threat intelligence, attacker techniques and relevant industry frameworks in the context of REA's environment, using them to set detection priorities and guide refined detection patterns that continuously improve coverage and signal quality.
• Investigate security alerts and incidents, independently determine whether containment is required, coordinate technical response activities and communicate effectively with the wider incident response team, senior management and business stakeholders as needed
• Produce and automate response playbooks to ensure rapid and effective containment and response
• Contribute to purple-team exercises and security testing to validate effectiveness of detections and identify gaps
• Partner with Product, Platform and Engineering teams to ensure new systems and changes have appropriate logging, monitoring and detection coverage
• Evaluate and use AI-assisted and other emerging tooling to improve detection, support investigations and response automation, applying sound security judgement and attacker-technique knowledge to guide investigative tasks and validate outputs.
• Mentor and share knowledge with other Security and Engineering team members through reviews, pairing and internal forums

Who we're looking for

• Ability to define detection engineering architectures, patterns and standards across multiple platforms, balancing detection coverage, signal quality, cost, performance, and operational impact
• Strong understanding of cloud and application architectures, including logging, monitoring, native security controls and