Senior Threat Detection & Incident Response Engineer

Marketplace; Auckland; Hybrid; NZD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working arrangements

Five weeks annual leave

Income Protection and Critical Illness

Professional development and career增长

Collaborative and inclusive culture

Job summary

New Zealand Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA) in Auckland seeks a Principal Detection and Response Engineer to drive advanced threat detection, threat hunting and incident response. You will design and tune detections across SIEM/XDR/EDR, lead hunting activities and translate threat intel into practical detections, while building automation and SOAR playbooks to strengthen security operations.

This senior role requires technical leadership, strong detection engineering, and the ability to

Qualifications

• Strong experience designing and tuning detection rules and analytics across SIEM, XDR or EDR.
• Experience investigating suspicious activity and threat hunting with telemetry and threat intel.
• Ability to translate threat insights into practical improvements; MITRE ATT&CK knowledge beneficial.
• Automation experience to improve security workflows; SOAR experience advantageous.
• Knowledge of NZISM and New Zealand public sector requirements; willingness to obtain NZ national security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Design, tune and maintain detection rules, correlation logic and behavioural analytics across SIEM, XDR and EDR.
• Lead threat hunting activities and translate threat intelligence into actionable detection content.
• Develop automation, SOAR playbooks and response workflows to improve security operations.
• Provide specialist expertise for security tool and platform evaluations and content reviews.
• Act as a tactical responder for significant cyber incidents, supporting containment, eradication and recovery; participate in a 24/7 on-call roster.

Skills

Detection engineering

SIEM

XDR

EDR

Threat hunting

Threat intelligence

Automation

SOAR

Incident response

NZISM

Security clearance (NZ)

Education

GCDA

GCIA

GCIH

Tools

SIEM

XDR

EDR

Job description

New Zealand Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA) in Auckland seeks a Principal Detection and Response Engineer to drive advanced threat detection, threat hunting and incident response. You will design and tune detections across SIEM/XDR/EDR, lead hunting activities and translate threat intel into practical detections, while building automation and SOAR playbooks to strengthen security operations.

This senior role requires technical leadership, strong detection engineering, and the ability to