Hands-On Security Engineering & Ops Director

Payscale; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Payscale is hiring a Director of Security Engineering & Operations to lead hands-on security architecture, tooling, and incident response across corporate, cloud, and hosting environments. You will own strategy, incident command, and security automation while directly guiding a talented team.

The role reports to the CISO and requires deep expertise in security engineering, operations, and MDR relationships, with a focus on zero-trust and compliance across a remote-first organization.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in information security, including 4+ years in a lead or management role across security engineering and/or security operations.
• Proven people-management track record in security context.
• Hands-on expertise in security engineering (controls design, automation) and security operations (detection, incident response).
• Experience with CrowdStrike Falcon platform and SIEM/SOAR orchestration.
• Experience with MDR/MSSP vendor relationships.
• Strong cloud/security foundation including IAM and zero-trust.
• Scripting/automation: PowerShell, Python, Bash; detection-as-code, IaC.
• Familiarity with MITRE ATT&CK framework and mapping to TTPs.
• Experience building security metrics and reporting.
• Zero-trust networks and tools (Cloudflare, Zscaler, AppGate).
• Experience with DLP/CASB architectures and tooling.

Responsibilities

• Direct, manage, and lead the security engineering and security operations teams; hire, onboard, review performance, and plan careers.
• Set strategy and objectives for both functions and translate into a measurable roadmap.
• Mentor engineers and analysts; provide technical coaching and growth feedback.
• Own on‑call rotation and after‑hours escalation for detection/response.
• Remain hands-on in engineering, architecture, and incident response.
• Own design and hardening of security controls across environments.
• Build and maintain security automation and integrations (SOAR, detection‑as‑code).
• Operate security tooling stack (EDR/XDR, SIEM, DLP/CASB) and ensure integration.
• Partner with Engineering and Infrastructure to embed secure-by-design in CI/CD and cloud architecture.
• Drive zero‑trust adoption across identity, endpoints, network, apps.
• Lead security for enterprise AI and agentic tooling with guardrails.
• Drive threat detection and incident response capabilities, MTTA/MTTR metrics.
• Lead or oversee incident response events as incident manager.
• Own MDR relationship and vendor SLAs.
• Extend detection/response to secure enterprise AI tooling.
• Coordinate vulnerability management with clear SLAs.
• Expand monitoring coverage with existing platforms and open-source tools.
• Deliver security program roadmap metrics and risk posture analyses.
• Collaborate on ISO27001 and SOC2 evidence and audit readiness.
• Lead vendor evaluations and buy/build/partner decisions.

Skills

Security engineering

Security operations

Incident response

Threat detection

Zero-trust

Cloud security

SIEM/SOAR

EDR/XDR

Python/PowerShell

MITRE ATT&CK

CrowdStrike Falcon

Tools

CrowdStrike Falcon

SIEM/SOAR

EDR/XDR

CASB

Job description

Payscale is hiring a Director of Security Engineering & Operations to lead hands-on security architecture, tooling, and incident response across corporate, cloud, and hosting environments. You will own strategy, incident command, and security automation while directly guiding a talented team.

The role reports to the CISO and requires deep expertise in security engineering, operations, and MDR relationships, with a focus on zero-trust and compliance across a remote-first organization.