Lead Detection Engineer - AI-Driven Cyber Security

ITSMF; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 197,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Capital One is seeking a Detection Engineer Manager, Cyber Security in McLean, VA to lead AI-driven detection engineering, DaC practices, and behavioral detections across endpoint environments. You’ll partner with CSOC, Threat Intelligence, and Hunt teams to advance governance and risk transformation.

The role requires 5+ years in security, strong leadership, and hands-on experience with EDR tools, Python, and security analytics.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree.
• At least 5 years of experience in cybersecurity or information technology.
• At least 4 years of experience evaluating, contributing to, or supporting development of cybersecurity capabilities.
• At least 4 years of experience with endpoint or host logs (Windows Event Logs, Sysmon, EDR telemetry).
• At least 2 years of experience with EDR platforms (CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne, Microsoft Defender).
• At least 1 year of experience with machine learning or data science applied to security.

Responsibilities

• AI-Driven Detection & Engineering: Leverage LLMs and machine learning to automate detection logic, summarize complex attack chains, reduce false positives, and accelerate the full detection development lifecycle using tools such as Capital One's Detection Engineering Assistant.
• Detection-as-Code (DaC) Leadership: Lead the design, development, and maintenance of detection rules using DaC methodologies, utilizing GenAI-assisted development workflows and CI/CD pipelines against the Cyber Detection Library (CDL).
• Behavioral Detection Engineering: Design and build high-fidelity behavioral detections that identify adversary patterns, TTPs, and anomalous endpoint activity — leveraging user and entity behavior signals, process telemetry, and correlation logic to distinguish malicious from benign activity at scale.
• Strategic Architecture: Utilize the MITRE ATTCK framework to visualize, prioritize, and close endpoint coverage gaps; drive detection architecture decisions that balance fidelity, volume, and operational risk across the endpoint threat surface.
• Offensive Alignment & Threat Research: Apply a deep understanding of Red Team methodologies and adversary TTPs to conduct hypothesis-driven threat research across enterprise endpoint environments — translating attacker techniques into high-fidelity detections and proactively identifying coverage gaps before they are exploited.
• Endpoint Domain Ownership: Own end-to-end detection coverage for the Endpoint threat surface — managing the full lifecycle from telemetry onboarding through alert deployment, tuning, and continuous coverage gap analysis in collaboration with the Coverage Review Team.
• Stakeholder & Risk Management: Partner with business leaders, CSOC, Cyber Threat Intelligence, and Cyber Threat Hunt to ensure robust monitoring across endpoint environments while ensuring all documentation meets strict fintech compliance and audit standards.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a technical bar-raiser across the team — mentoring engineers on traditional security concepts, emerging AI-driven workflows, and detection engineering best practices.

Job description

Capital One is seeking a Detection Engineer Manager, Cyber Security in McLean, VA to lead AI-driven detection engineering, DaC practices, and behavioral detections across endpoint environments. You’ll partner with CSOC, Threat Intelligence, and Hunt teams to advance governance and risk transformation.

The role requires 5+ years in security, strong leadership, and hands-on experience with EDR tools, Python, and security analytics.