Detection Engineer, Protective Services

DoorDash, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 131,000 - 192,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) plan with employer matching

16 weeks of paid parental leave

Wellness benefits

Commuter benefits match

Paid time off & paid sick leave

Medical, dental, and vision benefits

Job summary

DoorDash is seeking a Detection Engineer for Protective Services. You will build detections across identities, endpoints, cloud, and physical security signals, moving from hypothesis to deployment. You’ll work with engineers to target meaningful risk while reducing noise and maintaining scalable pipelines.

You’ll join a hands-on team focusing on detection enrichment, automation, and continuous improvement. The role reports to the Engineering Manager, Protective Services, and participates in

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in detection engineering, threat hunting, incident response, security operations, or related security software engineering.
• Experience contributing to production detection pipelines using source control, testing, review, deployment, and monitoring practices.
• Proficiency in SQL or a security query language and ability to write maintainable code in Python, Go, or similar language.
• Strong analytical skills to explore unfamiliar datasets, assess data quality, and turn threat info into testable hypotheses.
• Experience triaging alerts/investigations, correlating signals across data sources, and communicating evidence.
• Experience building detections or investigations using security, behavioral telemetry, or related data; exposure to identity, endpoint, cloud, OSINT, or physical security is a plus.
• Experience using automation/analytics to improve detection and investigation workflows; ML/LLM familiarity a plus.
• Familiarity with MITRE ATT&CK or D3FEND frameworks for coverage mapping.
• Strong collaboration and communication across engineering, investigative, and response teams; handling sensitive information.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with Snowflake, Cortex, or Google SecOps preferred.

Responsibilities

• Translate threat intelligence, incidents, and observed behavior into production detections.
• Build, test, deploy, tune, and maintain detections and supporting pipelines.
• Correlate signals across enterprise telemetry, marketplace activity, and other data to identify threats.
• Apply rules, statistical methods, ML, and LLM-based techniques to improve detection quality.
• Investigate detections by querying and correlating data; validate hypotheses and assess impact.
• Follow detections through investigation and resolution; refine logic and tooling from real-world findings.
• Contribute to technical reviews, testing, documentation, standards, and automation to strengthen reliability.

Skills

Detection engineering

Threat hunting

Incident response

Security operations

SQL

Python

Go

Data analysis

MITRE ATT&CK

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Snowflake

Cortex

Google SecOps

Job description

DoorDash is one of the world’s leading on-demand logistics platforms. Across DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Wolt, our operations span more than 40 countries, dozens of offices, and tens of thousands of employees.Global Safety and Security helps protect our people, property, operations, brand, and reputation across that footprint, using technology, agility, and a people-first approach to stay ahead of evolving risks. Within the team, Protective Services focuses on the safety of our executives, their families, and the operations that support them. Our detection engineering function brings together enterprise, marketplace, open-source, and physical security signals to identify threats that don’t fit neatly within a traditional SOC boundary. This role builds the detection capabilities that turn those signals into timely, actionable intelligence - and helps Protective Services find what matters before it becomes something bigger.

About the Role

Detection engineering looks a little different here.

As a Detection Engineer on Protective Services, you’ll build the technical capabilities that help identify and investigate threats to protected individuals. The signals you’re looking for won’t live neatly in one place—they may surface across identities and endpoints, cloud environments, marketplace activity, support interactions, physical access events, or open-source information.

You’ll connect those signals to find what matters. That means building detections, enrichment, and automation; separating meaningful risk from noise; and investigating what you uncover alongside Protective Services partners.

This is a hands-on engineering role where you’ll work across code, queries, data pipelines, detection repositories, and production systems. You’ll take detections from an initial hypothesis through deployment and tuning, then use what happens in the real world to make them better.

You’ll have ownership of well-understood problems while partnering with senior engineers when the technical complexity, evidence, or potential impact calls for deeper judgment.

This role reports to the Engineering Manager, Protective Services, and participates in an on-call rotation.

You’re excited about this opportunity because you will…

• Translate threat intelligence, incidents, investigative needs, and observed behavior into production detections that surface meaningful risk, reduce noise, and provide actionable context.
• Build, test, deploy, tune, and maintain detections and supporting pipelines using source-controlled engineering practices designed to operate reliably at scale.
• Correlate signals across enterprise telemetry, marketplace activity, physical security events, OSINT, support interactions, and other relevant data to identify and prioritize potential threats.
• Apply rules, statistical methods, machine learning, and LLM-based techniques where they improve detection quality, prioritization, or investigative context.
• Investigate detections by querying and correlating data, validating hypotheses, and assessing confidence, scope, and potential impact in partnership with Protective Services.
• Follow detections through investigation and resolution, using outcomes, false positives, missed indicators, and investigative friction to continuously improve detection logic, tooling, and workflows.
• Contribute to technical reviews, testing, documentation, standards, and automation that strengthen the reliability and maintainability of the detection function.
• Participate in on-call and support major investigations, clearly communicating the confidence and limitations of available signals.

We’re excited about you because you have…

• 3+ years of experience in detection engineering, threat hunting, incident response, security operations engineering, technical threat intelligence, or software engineering applied to security problems.
• Experience contributing to production detection pipelines using source control, testing, review, deployment, and monitoring practices.
• Proficiency in SQL or a security query language and the ability to write maintainable code in Python, Go, or another relevant language.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to explore unfamiliar datasets, assess data quality, troubleshoot across systems, and turn threat information into testable detection hypotheses.
• Experience triaging alerts and investigations, correlating signals across data sources, assessing confidence and scope, and clearly communicating what the evidence supports.
• Experience building detections or conducting investigations using security, behavioral, or other relevant telemetry. Exposure to identity, endpoint, cloud, marketplace, physical security, OSINT, or unstructured data is a plus.
• Experience using automation or analytics to improve detection and investigation workflows; familiarity with machine learning or LLM-based techniques is a plus.
• Familiarity with frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK or D3FEND and their use in organizing detection coverage and identifying gaps.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering, investigative, and response teams and handle sensitive information appropriately.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with Snowflake, Cortex, or Google SecOps is preferred.

We expect this position to be filled by 28 November 2026.

Compensation

The successful candidate’s starting pay will fall within the pay range listed below and is determined based on job-related factors including, but not limited to, skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Base salary is localized according to an employee’s work location. Ranges are market-dependent and may be modified in the future.

In addition to base salary, the compensation for this role includes opportunities for equity grants. Talk to your recruiter for more information.

DoorDash cares about you and your overall well-being. That’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package to all regular employees, which includes a 401(k) plan with employer matching, 16 weeks of paid parental leave, wellness benefits, commuter benefits match, paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act). DoorDash also offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, 11 paid holidays, disability and basic life insurance, family-forming assistance, and a mental health program, among others.

To learn more about our benefits, visit our careers page here .

See below for paid time off details:

• For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year.
• For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week).

The national base pay range for this position within the United States, including Illinois and Colorado.

$130,600 - $192,000 USD

About DoorDash

At DoorDash, our mission to empower local economies shapes how our team members move quickly, learn, and reiterate in order to make impactful decisions that display empathy for our range of users—from Dashers to merchant partners to consumers.
DoorDash is growing rapidly and changing constantly, which gives our team members the opportunity to share their unique perspectives, solve new challenges, and own their careers. We're committed to supporting employees’ happiness, healthiness, and overall well-being by providing comprehensive benefits and perks including premium healthcare, wellness expense reimbursement, paid parental leave and more.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We’re committed to growing and empowering a more inclusive community within our company, industry, and cities. That’s why we hire and cultivate diverse teams of people from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe that true innovation happens when everyone has room at the table and the tools, resources, and opportunity to excel.

Statement of Non-Discrimination: In keeping with our beliefs and goals, no employee or applicant will face discrimination or harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital/domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability status, or veteran status. Above and beyond discrimination and harassment based on “protected categories,” we also strive to prevent other subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (i.e., stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our office. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at DoorDash. We value a diverse workforce – people who identify as women, non-binary or gender non-conforming, LGBTQIA+, American Indian or Native Alaskan, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, differently-abled, caretakers and parents, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Thank you to the Level Playing Field Institute for this statement of non-discrimination.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and any other state or local hiring regulations, we will consider for employment any qualified applicant, including those with arrest and conviction records, in a manner consistent with the applicable regulation.

If you need any accommodations, please inform your recruiting contact upon initial connection.

Notice to Applicants for Jobs Located in NYC or Remote Jobs Associated With Office in NYC Only

We used Covey as part of our hiring and/or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT in NYC. As part of the hiring and/or promotion process, we provided Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound from August 21, 2023, through December 21, 2023. We resumed using Covey Scout for Inbound again on June 29, 2024, and ceased using Covey Scout for Inbound on April 30, 2026.