Senior Threat Detection & Response Engineer

Marketplace; Manawatū-Whanganui; Remote; NZD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Five weeks annual leave

Income protection

Critical illness insurance

Professional development

Collaborative culture

Job summary

NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) seeks a Principal Detection and Response Engineer to lead advanced threat detection, threat hunting and incident response. You will design, tune and maintain detection rules and analytics across SIEM, XDR and EDR platforms, helping protect critical services from cyber risk.

This senior role blends hands-on engineering with technical leadership, 24/7 on-call readiness, and a focus on improving detection quality through automation, content validation and collaboration

Qualifications

• Strong detection engineering experience across SIEM/XDR/EDR platforms.
• Experience investigating suspicious activity and hunting threats using telemetry and threat intel.
• Ability to translate threat intel into actionable detection content and improvements.

Responsibilities

• Design, tune and maintain detection rules, correlation logic and behavioural analytics.
• Lead threat hunting activities and translate threat intelligence into detections.
• Develop automation, SOAR playbooks and response workflows for security operations.
• Provide technical guidance and review detection content across platforms.
• Act as tactical responder for cyber incidents, supporting containment and recovery.

Skills

Threat detection engineering

Incident response

Detection rule tuning

Behaviour analytics

Threat hunting

Automation / scripting

Education

Relevant security qualifications or degree

GCDA / GCIA / GCIH advantageous

Tools

SIEM

XDR

EDR

Job description

NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) seeks a Principal Detection and Response Engineer to lead advanced threat detection, threat hunting and incident response. You will design, tune and maintain detection rules and analytics across SIEM, XDR and EDR platforms, helping protect critical services from cyber risk.

This senior role blends hands-on engineering with technical leadership, 24/7 on-call readiness, and a focus on improving detection quality through automation, content validation and collaboration