Detection and Response Engineer

Modal Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Modal Labs in San Francisco is seeking a Detection & Response Engineer to build scalable security systems for our cloud-based platform. You will design detections, drive incident response, and develop tooling that speeds investigations across our infrastructure.

You’ll collaborate with infrastructure, platform, and security engineers to ensure resilience, with a focus on AI-powered automation and observable services.

Qualifications

• Experience in detection engineering, incident response, security engineering, or software engineering with a security focus.

Responsibilities

• Design and build high-fidelity detections for attacks, abuse, and anomalies across our infrastructure and production systems.

Skills

Detection engineering

Incident response

Security engineering

Software engineering with security

Cloud-native environments

Kubernetes

Linux

Networking

SQL for security

AI/LLMs in security

Communication skills

Tools

SIEM

SOAR

EDR

Kubernetes security tooling

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Job description

About Us:
AI needs a new infrastructure layer. We're building it at Modal.

Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now.

Our customers include category-defining companies like Ramp, Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low-latency inference, fine-tune models, and access production-ready sandboxes at scale.

We've passed $1B in annualized run rate, up 15x from a year ago. In October 2026 we raised a $750M Series D led by Accel at a $15.75B valuation.

Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g., Seaborn, Luigi), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience.

The Role:

We’re looking for a Detection & Response Engineer to build the systems that help us identify, investigate, and respond to threats across our platform.

This is an engineering role focused on automation. You’ll build detections, investigation tooling, and response capabilities that scale with our infrastructure, using AI where it meaningfully improves signal, investigation speed, and operational effectiveness.

You’ll work closely with infrastructure, platform, and security engineers to ensure every incident makes the platform more resilient.

What You'll Work On:

Detection Engineering

• Design and build high-fidelity detections for attacks, abuse, and anomalous behavior across our infrastructure and production systems
• Continuously improve detections based on telemetry, threat intelligence, and lessons learned from incidents
• Improve visibility across cloud infrastructure, containers, identity systems, and production services

Incident Response

• Lead or participate in investigations spanning production infrastructure, cloud environments, and internal systems
• Build playbooks and automation that reduce investigation time and improve response consistency
• Drive post-incident improvements that eliminate entire classes of future incidents

Security Tooling & Automation

• Build internal tooling that improves detection, investigation, and response workflows
• Leverage LLMs to automate repetitive analysis, accelerate investigations, and surface actionable insights from security telemetry
• Improve the collection, quality, and usability of security telemetry across the platform

Engineering Partnership

• Partner with engineering teams to ensure new systems are observable and secure by default
• Help teams instrument services with the telemetry needed for effective detection and response
• Drive security improvements that make the platform easier to defend over time

You May Be a Fit If:

• You have experience in detection engineering, incident response, security engineering, or software engineering with a strong security focus
• You have strong software engineering skills and experience building production systems.
• You’ve investigated security incidents in cloud-native or distributed environments
• You’re familiar with modern cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, Linux, and networking
• You’ve built detections using logs, telemetry, behavioral signals, or large-scale event data.
• You have strong SQL skills for investigating security events and developing detections
• You’re interested in applying AI and LLMs to detection, investigation, and response, and in understanding emerging threats involving AI-powered systems
• You have strong written and verbal communication skills

Nice-to-Have:

• Experience building AI- or LLM-powered security tooling
• Experience with SIEM, SOAR, or EDR platforms
• Experience with Kubernetes security or large-scale cloud infrastructure
• Experience with threat hunting, malware analysis, or digital forensics
• Experience contributing to security operations in a high-growth engineering organization