Senior Engineering Manager – Incident Response

Atlassian; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 221,000 - 289,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Volunteer days

Job summary

Atlassian is seeking a senior Incident Response leader to drive high-impact security incidents in a cloud environment. You will coordinate complex investigations, lead a 5–8 person US-based team, and shape incident response strategy with cross-functional partners.

The role emphasizes executive communication, process improvement, and adoption of AI tools to reduce toil. You will work with Detection, Security Engineering, Product Security, Legal, Crisis Communications, Support, and leadership to

Qualifications

• Experience leading complex, multi-stakeholder security incidents in SaaS/cloud/enterprise environments.
• Strong executive communication skills translating technical info into clear decisions and next steps.
• Experience deploying investigative AI and automation in security operations or incident response.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex, high-impact incident response work in a cloud environment.
• Coordinate incidents with cross-functional teams and executive leadership.
• Directly manage a team of 5–8 in the US region and coach incident responders.
• Improve IR processes through playbooks, metrics, and post-incident reviews.

Skills

Incident leadership

Executive communication

Security incidents

SaaS/cloud

Automation tooling

AI for IR

Tools

Detection tooling

Log analysis

Incident management software

Job description

Working at Atlassian

Atlassians can choose where they work – whether in an office, from home, or a combination of the two. That way, Atlassians have more control over supporting their family, personal goals, and other priorities. We can hire people in any country where we have a legal entity.

Responsibilities

In this role, you’ll lead high-impact incident response work in a complex cloud environment and help shape how Atlassian responds to security events at scale. You’ll lead or coordinate complex security incidents, bringing structure, urgency, and sound judgment under pressure. You’ll partner with Detection, Security Engineering, Product Security, Legal, Crisis Communications, Support, and senior leadership to drive investigation, containment, recovery, and follow‑through. You’ll directly manage a team of 5–8 in the US region. You’ll coach incident responders and senior practitioners, raising the quality of investigations, handoffs, decision‑making, and executive communication. You’ll improve the incident response system through playbooks, metrics, exercises, post‑incident reviews, and better tooling. A key part of the role will be driving the adoption of investigative AI tools and automation that help analysts triage faster, surface relevant signals, reduce toil, and improve consistency without compromising judgment or security rigor. You’ll also support regulated and high‑trust environments, including work that requires a strong understanding of formal incident handling, reporting expectations, and documented operating procedures.

What You’ll Bring

On day one, we’ll expect you to bring a strong mix of incident leadership, operational maturity, and people leadership. You’ll have experience directly leading complex, multi‑stakeholder security incidents in a SaaS, cloud, or enterprise environment, along with demonstrated success managing and developing senior security engineers, incident responders, and/or technical leads. You’ll have strong executive communication skills, including the ability to translate incomplete technical information into clear decisions, risks, and next steps. You’ll have experience improving incident response programs through metrics, retrospectives, process design, readiness exercises, and cross‑team influence, as well as hands‑on familiarity with investigation workflows, detection and response tooling, log analysis, and operational coordination across globally distributed teams. You should have experience deploying investigative AI tools and automation in security operations or incident response environments, including using automation to reduce analyst toil, improve triage quality, accelerate investigations, enrich cases, retrieve relevant knowledge, summarize findings, or orchestrate response workflows. You’ll also bring strong systems thinking: the ability to connect incidents to broader improvements in telemetry, detection logic, escalation paths, tooling, and operating models, together with calm, structured decision‑making in ambiguous, high‑pressure situations.

What Will Set You Apart

Experience serving as an incident commander or major incident manager for high‑severity cyber incidents will help you stand out, as will experience supporting regulated environments or formal incident reporting obligations, including government or FedRAMP‑adjacent contexts. We’ll value experience building or scaling follow‑the‑sun incident response models across regions and introducing AI‑assisted investigation workflows, case enrichment, knowledge retrieval, summarization, or orchestration capabilities in security operations. Strong understanding of how to use operational metrics, quality signals, and error patterns to guide program investments is valuable, as is experience speaking externally, representing security programs, or contributing to broader security community practices.

Our team culture

The Incident Response team values calm execution, clear communication, and continuous learning. We are collaborative, direct, and low‑ego during incidents, and we expect leaders to care about both outcomes and the health of the people doing the work. We use blameless review, measurable improvement, and thoughtful automation to get better over time. We want leaders who can set a high bar while creating trust, psychological safety, and accountability across regions and functions.

Why this role matters

This is a rare opportunity to lead one of the most important security functions in a global software company. You’ll influence how Atlassian handles major incidents, matures its response capabilities, and invests in the future of security operations. You’ll work on meaningful problems at the intersection of incident command, operations, engineering, and trust, help define how investigative AI and automation can responsibly improve security response at scale, and partner with senior security and business leaders while building durable systems, stronger responders, and better outcomes for customers.

Compensation

At Atlassian, we strive to design equitable, explainable, and competitive compensation programs. We follow consistent hiring practices and account for each candidate's skills, knowledge, and experience when setting base pay within the range. Please visit go.atlassian.com/payzones for more information on which locations are included in each of our geographic pay zones. However, please confirm the zone for your specific location with your recruiter. This role may also be eligible for benefits, bonuses, commissions, and equity.

Pay Ranges

• Zone A: $221,400 - $289,050
• Zone B: $199,800 - $260,850
• Zone C: $184,500 - $240,875

Role

In The United States, we have three geographic pay zones. For this role, our current base pay ranges for new hires in each zone are:

Qualifications

Benefits & Perks

Atlassian offers a wide range of perks and benefits designed to support you, your family and to help you engage with your local community. Our offerings include health and wellbeing resources, paid volunteer days, and so much more. To learn more, visit go.atlassian.com/perksandbenefits.

About Atlassian

At Atlassian, we're motivated by a common goal: to unleash the potential of every team. Our software products help teams all over the planet and our solutions are designed for all types of work. Team collaboration through our tools makes what may be impossible alone, possible together. We believe that the unique contributions of all Atlassians create our success. To ensure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone's perspectives and experience, we never discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines. To provide you the best experience, we can support with accommodations or adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Simply inform our Recruitment team during your conversation with them. To learn more about our culture and hiring process, visit go.atlassian.com/crh. In line with local law, identity verification (which may include use of biometric data) is a condition of employment with Atlassian for employment fraud purposes.