Security Engineer, Detection and Response, San Francisco

Notion; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Highly competitive cash compensation

Equity

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Notion is seeking a hands-on Detection Engineer to strengthen our cloud-native security operations. You will design and enhance detection mechanisms while collaborating with multiple teams to proactively respond to incidents.

The ideal candidate has 6+ years in detection engineering and expertise in cloud-based environments like AWS or GCP. This role is based in San Francisco with a competitive salary of $230,000 - $260,000 annually.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in detection engineering or security operations.
• Experience with production detections that have strong signal quality.
• Fluency in detection languages such as Sigma or KQL.

Responsibilities

• Design high-signal detections across environments.
• Build and maintain detection platforms.
• Participate in incident response and investigations.

Skills

Detection engineering

Security operations

Incident response

Threat hunting

Cloud security

Communication

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

SIEM

EDR

SOAR

Job description

Who We Are

Notion is the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents think together. We’re building one place where your knowledge, projects, meetings, and AI tools live side by side, so work is faster, clearer, and less fragmented. Millions of individuals, small teams, and large companies run their work on Notion.

Notinos, our employees, are customer zero in bringing this future of work to life. We care about craft, building things that last, and the belief that great work is still fundamentally human. Our goal isn’t to ship the next feature. Each and every team of Notinos works to set the standard for how humans work together in the AI era. From building a business’s system of record to making and managing AI agents to automating away busy work, we care deeply about giving our customers more time for their life’s work.

About The Role

Millions of people rely on Notion to do their most important work, and protecting that trust is foundational to everything we build.

We’re looking for a hands‑on Detection Engineer to build and operate the systems and workflows we use to detect and respond to attacks across Notion’s cloud‑native environment. You’ll ship high‑signal detections, improve the platform that powers them, participate in incident response, and help shape how detection and response engineering scales at Notion.

You’ll work closely with Engineering, Corporate Security, and Infrastructure, with broad latitude to identify gaps, prioritize investments, and build what’s needed next.

We view detection and response as a software engineering discipline: detections are code, platforms are products, and measurement matters.

What You’ll Achieve

• Design and maintain high‑signal detections across cloud, identity, endpoints, and SaaS environments.
• Build and improve the detection platform, including rule lifecycle management, tuning, measurement, and rollout safety.
• Develop tooling and automation that accelerate triage, enrichment, investigation, and detection authoring, including LLM‑based workflows where useful.
• Translate threat intelligence and adversary TTPs into durable detections, telemetry requirements, and response improvements.
• Participate in investigations, incident response, and postmortems that drive long‑term security improvements.
• Define and track key metrics such as coverage, MTTD, and alert quality to guide investment decisions.
• Participate in a shared on‑call rotation for incident response.

Skills You’ll Need to Bring

• Have 6+ years of experience in detection engineering, security operations, incident response, or threat hunting.
• Have built and operated production detections with strong signal quality and sustainable tuning processes.
• Are fluent in one or more detection languages such as Sigma, KQL, SPL, YARA‑L, EQL, or Panther.
• Have an offensive security mindset and have led purple team, blue team, or adversary emulation exercises that improved detections and telemetry.
• Have strong cloud security experience in AWS, GCP, or Azure, including identity‑focused attack detection.
• Are hands‑on with SIEM, EDR, and SOAR platforms in large‑scale environments.
• Communicate clearly through design docs, runbooks, and incident reports, and can drive projects independently.

Nice to Have

• Experience applying LLMs or agent‑style tooling to security workflows.
• Experience securing AI‑enabled systems or endpoint tooling.
• Kubernetes or container detection experience.
• Background in threat intelligence, malware analysis, or digital forensics.
• Contributions to the detection engineering community through research, tooling, or talks.
• Experience at a high‑growth startup or AI company.

A Note on AI

You don’t need deep AI expertise for every role, but we do expect every Notino to be intellectually curious, drawn to tinkering and discovery, and excited to use AI as a real collaborator in their work. For some roles, AI fluency is a core requirement — when that’s the case, we’ll say so explicitly in the qualifications. People who thrive here don’t treat AI as a novelty. They use it to think better, and make their work easier for others to build on.

Equal Opportunity & Accommodations

We hire talented people from a wide range of backgrounds. If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every bullet, we still encourage you to apply.

Notion is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic. Consistent with applicable law, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. We provide reasonable accommodations during the application process; if you need one, please let our recruiter know.

Notion is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Notion considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Notion is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please let our recruiter know.

Benefits

Notion is committed to providing highly competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role’s scope and complexity, and the candidate’s experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided below. For roles based in San Francisco or New York City, the estimated base salary range for this role is $230,000 - $260,000 per year.