Senior Security Architect & Threat Defense Lead

Cars.com; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Cars.com is seeking a seasoned Principal Security Engineer to design, implement, and manage our security posture. You will report to the CISO and influence cross‑functional teams across product, engineering, and IT.

You will lead threat defense, build secure architectures, mentor SecOps engineers, ensure regulatory compliance (PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2), and drive secure SDLC and CI/CD practices.

Responsibilities

• Report directly to the CISO and influence executive-level initiatives.
• Architect and maintain a comprehensive security architecture for infrastructure and apps.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to embed security into processes.
• Lead Threat Defence and mentor SecOps engineers.
• Develop security policies, standards, and compliance with industry frameworks.
• Integrate security into SDLC and CI/CD pipelines.
• Perform security assessments, code reviews, and penetration testing.
• Design security controls for IaC, cloud, and containerized apps.
• Automate security testing and monitoring across pipelines.
• Monitor events, coordinate incident response, and mitigate impacts.
• Stay updated on threats and coordinate with leadership on mitigations.
• Allocate resources and prioritize security initiatives with senior leadership.
• Implement automated monitoring and logging for real-time detection.

Job description

Cars.com is seeking a seasoned Principal Security Engineer to design, implement, and manage our security posture. You will report to the CISO and influence cross‑functional teams across product, engineering, and IT.

You will lead threat defense, build secure architectures, mentor SecOps engineers, ensure regulatory compliance (PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2), and drive secure SDLC and CI/CD practices.