Head of Detection & Response, Security Engineering

Confluent Inc; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Confluent Inc. is seeking an experienced Senior Manager to lead Detection & Response within Infrastructure Security. You will define the strategic vision, roadmap, and operations for threat detection and incident response across multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).

The role leads a distributed team across North America and India, focusing on automation-driven security practices, telemetry, and cross-functional collaboration to reduce operational toil and improve program maturity.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in software development, security engineering, or security operations.
• 5+ years in direct engineering or security management.
• Deep technical domain expertise across detection engineering, incident response, and threat intelligence.
• Experience building or operating scalable data/event pipelines, modern telemetry stacks, or stream-processing architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, high-severity security incidents with composure, clarity, and cross-functional leadership.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with a proven ability to translate complex security risks into clear strategic priorities for engineering leadership.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the strategic vision and roadmap execution for Confluent's Detection & Response program across our multi-cloud infrastructure.
• Build, scale, and mentor a distributed, global team across North America and India.
• Drive the evolution of detection engineering and incident response capabilities by utilizing modern software practices with an emphasis on large scale automation.
• Oversee security incident response operations, serving as an escalation point/Incident Commander during high-severity security events and driving post-incident reviews.
• Establish or improve operational metrics to continuously evaluate and improve program maturity.
• Partner closely with Engineering, and stakeholders across Legal and Compliance teams, to integrate detection telemetry and proactive response across the company.
• Champion an engineering-centric security culture focused on automation, noise reduction, and continuous improvement to minimize operational toil for responders.

Skills

Leadership

Security management

Incident response

Software development

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Engineering, or equivalent experience

Job description

Confluent Inc. is seeking an experienced Senior Manager to lead Detection & Response within Infrastructure Security. You will define the strategic vision, roadmap, and operations for threat detection and incident response across multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).

The role leads a distributed team across North America and India, focusing on automation-driven security practices, telemetry, and cross-functional collaboration to reduce operational toil and improve program maturity.