Director, Security Operations — AI-Driven Defense Leader

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

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare for family, including butel

Competitive compensation and 401K

RSU grants for full-time employees

ESPP program

Flexible vacation policy

Maternity & paternity leave

MacBook Pro with workstation stipend

Childcare bonus (human children only)

Fertility treatment and support

Learning & development program

Commuter benefits

Culture that supports a healthy work‑l

Job summary

Backblaze is seeking a Director of Security Operations to lead day-to-day cybersecurity operations across traditional and AI-enabled environments. You will report to the CISO and partner with Security Architecture & Engineering to implement and operate security controls while guiding incident response and security programs.

This hands-on leadership role requires managing incidents, driving automation, and shaping security analytics, threat hunting, and vulnerability management across cloud,

Qualifications

• Experience leading Security Operations, Incident Response, Detection Engineering, Vulnerability Management, IAM, or related cybersecurity functions.
• Demonstrated 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

Incident Response

Detection Engineering

Vulnerability Management

IAM

Leadership

Executive Communication

Job description

Backblaze is seeking a Director of Security Operations to lead day-to-day cybersecurity operations across traditional and AI-enabled environments. You will report to the CISO and partner with Security Architecture & Engineering to implement and operate security controls while guiding incident response and security programs.

This hands-on leadership role requires managing incidents, driving automation, and shaping security analytics, threat hunting, and vulnerability management across cloud,