Staff Security Engineer, Data Science Engineering

Nscale; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package (base

Equity

Flexible work policies

Job summary

Nscale in Seattle is seeking a Staff Security Engineer to make the data behind Cyber Defense's detections trustworthy and to uncover threats the team might otherwise miss. This is a hands-on individual contributor role reporting to the Director, Cyber Defense.

You'll work across endpoint, identity, cloud, network, vulnerability, SaaS and internal platform telemetry, partnering with the teams that generate the data and with Security Operations, which uses it and provides feedback on alert

Qualifications

• 8+ years in data engineering, data science, detection engineering, security analytics or a related technical field.
• Experience building security data pipelines, including collection from APIs and event sources, idempotent loads, partitioning, backfill, replay and schema evolution.
• Experience with a cloud warehouse and a streaming system, such as BigQuery and Kafka, and measurable data quality.
• Understanding security telemetry across identity, endpoint, cloud control planes, networks, vulnerabilities and SaaS audit logs.
• Ability to apply statistical or machine-learning methods to security analysis and translate results into detections.
• Ability to explain coverage gaps and uncertain findings clearly to analysts, engineers and leaders.
• Hands-on with pipelines, schemas and analysis while building repeatable methods.

Responsibilities

• Data inventory and collection: own sources, owners, collection methods, freshness, coverage and gaps.
• Data reliability and quality: monitor freshness, volume, completeness, duplicates, schema drift and cross-source consistency.
• Detection and investigation: build baselines, anomaly detection and cross-source correlations.
• AI-assisted analysis and collaboration: curate datasets for AI-assisted analysis with provenance and access controls.
• KPIs: track inventory, freshness, quality alerts and detections impact.

Skills

Data engineering

Security analytics

Detection engineering

Security telemetry

Machine learning for security

Communication of uncertainty

Tools

BigQuery

Kafka

Job description

About Nscale

Nscale is the GPU cloud engineered for AI. We provide cost-effective, high-performance infrastructure for AI start-ups and large enterprise customers. Nscale enables AI-focused companies to achieve superior results by reducing the complexity of AI development. Our GPU cloud bolsters technical capabilities and directly supports strategic business outcomes, including cost management, rapid innovation, and environmental responsibility.

We thrive on a culture of relentless innovation, ownership, and accountability, where every team member takes pride in their work and drives it with excellence and urgency. As an Nscaler, you'll build trust through openness and transparency, where everyone is inspired to do their best work. If you join our team, you'll be contributing to building the technology that powers the future.

About the Role

We're hiring a Staff Security Engineer to make the data behind Cyber Defense's detections and investigations trustworthy and to uncover threats the team might otherwise miss. This is a hands-on individual contributor role reporting to the Director, Cyber Defense.

You'll work across endpoint, identity, cloud, network, vulnerability, SaaS and internal platform telemetry, partnering with the teams that generate the data and with Security Operations, which uses it and provides feedback on alert quality. The work starts with engineering: collecting data completely and making gaps visible. From there, you'll build behavioral baselines and cross-source analyses that become usable detections, not just models or notebooks.

What you'll be doing

Data inventory and collection

• Own the inventory of security-relevant sources, including their owners, collection methods, freshness, coverage limits and known gaps.
• Build and operate idempotent batch and streaming collection from APIs, event streams, object stores and internal systems. Make partial drains, late feeds and schema changes detectable; support backfill and replay.
• Define consistent identity, asset, time and severity conventions while preserving raw payloads. Document lineage, retention and the limits of what each dataset can support, and handle personal data and secrets deliberately.

Data reliability and quality

• Monitor freshness, volume, completeness, duplicates, schema drift and cross-source consistency. Route quality failures to an owner so analysts know when the data cannot be trusted.
• Make pipeline failures visible, with routine backfill and replay and measured cost per source.
• Distinguish exact figures from lower bounds and unknowns wherever the data is used.

Detection and investigation

• Build and evaluate behavioral baselines, anomaly detection and cross-source correlations against investigation outcomes and real alert volume. Work with Security Operations to tune or retire signals that do not earn their place.
• Support major incidents with defensible scoping, timelines and pattern analysis, turning useful one-off work into repeatable queries or detections.
• Partner with Security Operations to turn analytical findings into signals responders can use and assess against labelled outcomes.

AI-assisted analysis and collaboration

• Prepare curated, documented datasets for AI-assisted analysis, with scoped and audited access, provenance, freshness signals and safe failure when data is missing or stale.
• Help detection engineers, analysts and security engineers ask better questions of the data and understand the uncertainty in the answers.
• Negotiate access, schemas and collection cadences with the teams that own source systems, and report coverage gaps back to them.

KPIs

• Share of security-relevant sources inventoried, collected and documented, with known gaps named.
• Freshness and completeness compliance for critical sources, without silent partial drains.
• Share of sources with quality alerting to a named owner and time to identify a data defect.
• Measured precision of detections retained by Security Operations and analyst time saved on data wrangling.

About You

• You bring 8+ years in data engineering, data science, detection engineering, security analytics or a related technical field, including significant work with security data.
• You have built and operated security data pipelines, including collection from APIs and event sources, idempotent loads, partitioning, backfill, replay and schema evolution. You can diagnose the difference between a complete dataset and one that only looks complete.
• You can work with a cloud warehouse and a streaming system, such as BigQuery and Kafka or equivalents, and you have made data quality measurable and actionable for the people who depend on it.
• You understand security telemetry across areas such as identity, endpoint, cloud control planes, networks, vulnerabilities and SaaS audit logs, including how attackers can appear in that data.
• You can apply statistical or machine-learning methods to security analysis, evaluate them against real outcomes and translate the result into a detection that analysts can use.
• You can work with teams that own the source systems to agree access, schemas and collection cadences, and explain coverage gaps and uncertain findings clearly to analysts, engineers and leaders.
• You stay hands-on with pipelines, schemas and analysis while building repeatable methods that make the wider team less dependent on one person.

Experience with multi-tenant cloud or AI infrastructure, graph-based entity resolution, privacy-sensitive data governance, or building data foundations for AI-assisted analysis would be useful, but is not required.

What we can offer you

• Highly competitive US compensation package (base + bonus + equity), with performance reviews every 12 months.
• Join one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies — your chance to directly shape how global AI capacity is planned and deployed.
• Expect a dynamic progression plan tailored to your ambitions. Grow by leading critical cross-functional initiatives and shaping capital strategy — always with our full support.
• Human-First Flexibility: We treat you as humans first. We treat you as humans first.

Equal Opportunities Statement

We strongly encourage applications from people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

If there's anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know.

The responsibilities outlined in this job description are not exhaustive and are intended to provide a general overview of the position. The employee may be required to perform additional duties, tasks, and responsibilities as assigned by management, consistent with the skills and qualifications required for the role.

The range below reflects the base salary for the position. Actual compensation may vary based on job-related factors such as skill set, experience, education, and location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for bonus, equity, and/or commission programs. Nscale may offer a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, flexible paid time off, parental leave, and retirement plan participation.

Salary Range

$190,000—$230,000 USD

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