Director, Security Operations — AI-Driven Cyber Defense

Backblaze External Website; United States; On-site; USD 205,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare benefits for family

401K

RSU grants for full-time employees

ESPP program

Flexible vacation policy

Maternity & paternity leave

MacBook Pro + workstation stipend

Commuter benefits

Learning & development program

Culture supporting work-life balance

Job summary

Backblaze is seeking a Director of Security Operations to lead day-to-day cybersecurity operations across traditional and AI-enabled environments. Reporting to the CISO, you will guide the security operations team, manage incidents, and shape security programs.

This hands-on leadership role requires implementing and operating security controls, leading teams, incidents, and programs, with a focus on AI-assisted detection and rapid response.

Qualifications

• Experience leading Security Operations, Incident Response, Detection Engineering, Vulnerability Management, IAM, or related cybersecurity functions.
• Hands-on experience implementing and operating security controls across cloud, infrastructure, applications, identity, endpoints, and networks.
• Strong technical understanding of security analytics, detection engineering, exposure management, adversary emulation, and identity security.
• Experience leading significant cybersecurity incidents and cross-functional response activities.
• Experience implementing security automation and AI-assisted operational capabilities.
• Strong leadership, mentoring, communication, and executive presentation skills.
• Experience in cloud-native or large-scale distributed environments and familiarity with modern cybersecurity and AI-risk frameworks is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead security monitoring, incident response, threat hunting, security analytics, vulnerability management, adversary emulation, identity security, and operational resilience.
• Establish operational priorities, service objectives, metrics, playbooks, and processes based on organizational risk and business needs.
• Serve as incident commander for significant cybersecurity events and ensure lessons learned drive improvements to controls and operations.
• Drive responsible adoption of AI-assisted detection, investigation, vulnerability analysis, threat hunting, and response capabilities.
• Ensure effective security monitoring and response for AI applications, autonomous agents, workloads, and non-human identities.
• Use automation to reduce manual work and compress detection, analysis, containment, and remediation timelines.
• Partner with Security Architecture & Engineering to ensure controls are effectively designed, implemented, operationalized, monitored, and validated.
• Develop security talent and provide the CISO with clear reporting on incidents, exposure, operational performance, risk, and program maturity.

Skills

Security operations leadership

Incident response

Cloud security

AI risk & detection

Leadership & mentoring

Executive reporting

Tools

Security analytics tools

Job description

Backblaze is seeking a Director of Security Operations to lead day-to-day cybersecurity operations across traditional and AI-enabled environments. Reporting to the CISO, you will guide the security operations team, manage incidents, and shape security programs.

This hands-on leadership role requires implementing and operating security controls, leading teams, incidents, and programs, with a focus on AI-assisted detection and rapid response.