Senior Security Operations / Detection Engineer

LiteLLM; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

LiteLLM in San Francisco is seeking a Senior Security Operations / Detection Engineer to build and own detection and response across our infrastructure. You’ll own log pipelines, detections, runbooks, alert handling, and incident coordination with a small, fast-moving team.

This hands-on role reports to security lead, requires 5+ years, experience building detection from scratch, SIEM tuning (Splunk), and strong Python scripting.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience building a detection and response function from scratch.
• Hands-on experience building and tuning SIEM detections, preferably in Splunk, and managing them as code.
• Experience building log pipelines from cloud and CI systems.
• Strong familiarity with GitHub, Okta, and cloud audit logs.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain security log pipelines and document coverage gaps.
• Build, validate, and tune detections across cloud infrastructure, CI systems, identity providers, and internal services.
• Manage detections as code, with clear documentation and ongoing maintenance.
• Write and maintain a runbook for every alert.
• Define severity-based alert response SLAs and own performance against them.
• Lead incidents from investigation and containment through recovery and follow-up.
• Produce clear incident timelines, reports, and recommendations.
• Measure and improve time to detect and contain threats.
• Automate detection of unexpected identity and access changes and drive remediation.
• Prioritize improvements based on risk and the needs of a small engineering organization.

Skills

SIEM (Splunk)

Detection engineering

Incident response

Python scripting

Cloud logs

Tools

GitHub

Okta

Splunk

Job description

LiteLLM is an open-source AI Gateway that gives developers a unified interface to LLM providers. We’re looking for a Senior Security Operations / Detection Engineer to build and own detection and response across our infrastructure.

About the role

You’ll own what we can see and how we respond: log pipelines, detections, runbooks, alert handling, and incident coordination.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role reporting to our security lead. You’ll work directly with engineering to build and operate a detection and response function suited to a small company. San Francisco is preferred.

You’ll own your roadmap, build and run the tooling yourself, and lead incidents with incomplete information. Strong written communication is essential: you’ll coordinate independently with engineers, customers, and vendors across time zones.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain security log pipelines and document coverage gaps.

• Build, validate, and tune detections across cloud infrastructure, CI systems, identity providers, and internal services.

• Manage detections as code, with clear documentation and ongoing maintenance.

• Write and maintain a runbook for every alert.

• Define severity-based alert response SLAs and own performance against them.

• Lead incidents from investigation and containment through recovery and follow-up.

• Produce clear incident timelines, reports, and recommendations.

• Measure and improve time to detect and contain threats.

• Automate detection of unexpected identity and access changes and drive remediation.

• Prioritize improvements based on risk and the needs of a small engineering organization.

What we’re looking for

• 5+ years of relevant experience.

• Experience building a detection and response function from scratch.

• Hands-on experience building and tuning SIEM detections, preferably in Splunk, and managing them as code.

• Experience building log pipelines from cloud and CI systems.

• Strong familiarity with GitHub, Okta, and cloud audit logs, including their limitations.

• Experience leading incidents end-to-end and making containment decisions on partial information.

• Understanding of OAuth, personal access tokens, OIDC, and how attackers abuse authentication systems.

• Ability to write Python scripts to investigate incidents and automate security operations.

• Strong independent judgment and experience owning priorities with limited oversight.

• Clear communication under pressure and a willingness to surface bad news early.

• Availability to overlap with Pacific working hours.

Bonus points

• You helped build a detection and response function at a growing technology company.

• Experience in managed detection and response or incident response across multiple customer environments.

• Experience partnering closely with engineers in a small, fast-moving team.

Why join LiteLLM?

• Own detection and response across the environment, from collecting logs to leading incidents.

• Build a function around the needs of a small company.

• Work directly with security and engineering to close the gaps you find.

• Set priorities and implement improvements yourself.

About LiteLLM

LiteLLM provides a unified API for LLM providers, along with routing, authentication, budgets, observability, and governance for production AI systems.