Security Engineer

CipherData; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

CipherData in Bellevue, WA is seeking a Security Engineer to join a founding security team. You will build detection and correlation content, label real investigations, and work inside customer SOCs as AIDR runs in production. The role grows from hands-on SOC work to owning large components for senior engineers.

You will collaborate with the AI engineering team to move ideas into customer environments within days, tuning detections and enabling reliable outcomes in fast-moving deployments.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in a SOC, detection engineering, threat hunting, or IR
• Written and tuned production detections with FP trade-offs explained
• Experience with at least one SIEM or security data platform and EDR/XDR telemetry
• Working Python; code reviews, tests, and CI
• Comfort with ambiguity and ownership at an early-stage startup

Responsibilities

• Write, test, tune, and retire the detection logic and correlation rules that turn multi-vendor security data into signal our agents can reason over
• Label real investigations into benchmark datasets and document cases where agent output is confidently wrong
• Track attacker tradecraft and turn it into detection content, test cases, and agent capability
• Contribute to normalization, enrichment, and query patterns on our SIEM-less security lakehouse as we expand it
• Help deploy, tune, and validate AIDR in customer environments and carry analyst feedback back into detection and evaluation
• Participate in customer-reported and internal incident response, including analysis, documentation, and post-incident review

Skills

SOC experience

Detection tuning

Python

CI/CD

Ownership

Tools

SIEM

EDR/XDR

Job description

About the Role

AIDR's agents investigate every alert autonomously. Your job is to make sure they investigate the right things, the right way. You will build the detection and correlation content our agents reason over, label the real investigations that tell us whether their conclusions are correct, and work inside customer SOCs while AIDR runs in production.

This is a product role, not a corporate security or compliance role. You are joining our founding security team — you will work directly with the AI engineering team and with the engineer who leads our security function, and you will see your detection work go from idea to customer environment in days. We will level this role to the person: a strong engineer with a few years of hands‑on SOC or detection work will grow fast here; a senior engineer will own large pieces outright.

What You'll Do

• Detection and correlation engineering: Write, test, tune, and retire the detection logic and correlation rules that turn multi‑vendor security data into signal our agents can reason over.
• Ground truth: Label real investigations into the benchmark datasets that measure whether agent output is right; find and document the cases where it is confidently wrong.
• Threat research: Track attacker tradecraft and turn it into detection content, test cases, and agent capability.
• Security lakehouse: Contribute to normalization, enrichment, and query patterns on our SIEM‑less security lakehouse as we expand it.
• Customer SOC work: Help deploy, tune, and validate AIDR in customer environments and carry analyst feedback back into detection and evaluation.
• Incident response: Participate in customer‑reported and internal incident response, including analysis, documentation, and post‑incident review.

Our Core Values

Five principles guide every decision at CipherData. We hire against them and evaluate against them:

• Trustworthiness — be trustworthy to all people. Integrity, transparency, and dependability with colleagues, partners, and customers.
• Growth Mindset — learn from anything, anyone, anytime. Past experience is data, not dogma. Curiosity over ego; first principles over status quo.
• Proactive Ownership — do the right thing for the customer. Customer first, then company, then team, then self. Step beyond your role and hold yourself accountable.
• Disagree and Commit — debate when it matters, execute with unity. Challenge high‑impact decisions with data and conviction, regardless of title. Once decided, commit fully.
• Impact‑Driven Execution — ship, learn, iterate. Move fast, take calculated risks, and measure yourself by outcomes, not activity.

Minimum Qualifications

• 3+ years hands‑on in a SOC, detection engineering, threat hunting, or incident response role
• You have written and tuned detections in production and can explain the false‑positive trade‑offs you made
• Working experience with at least one SIEM or security data platform and EDR/XDR telemetry
• Working Python; comfortable in a codebase with code review, tests, and CI
• Comfort with ambiguity and ownership at an early‑stage startup: you scope your own work, ask for help early, and ship

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years, including senior‑level detection engineering or IR (we will level and title accordingly — Senior Security Engineer)
• Detection‑as‑code practice
• Cloud and identity telemetry depth
• Experience building labeled datasets or evaluations
• Familiarity with LLM‑based systems and their failure modes
• Purple team, adversary emulation, or offensive security background

Details

• Position: Security Engineer / Senior Security Engineer, Detection & Response (leveled to experience)
• Experience: 3+ years
• Employment type: Full‑time
• Location: Bellevue, WA

CipherData is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

CipherData [e-mail]