Staff Security Software Engineer, Detection & Response

Pinterest Engineering; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 177,000 - 365,000; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking an experienced Security Engineer to enhance detection/response capabilities and combat evolving threats. You’ll lead the Detection & Response Team, build new capabilities, and automate workflows to protect employees and infrastructure.

Ideal candidates have strong IR, SIEM, and cloud‑first expertise, with demonstrated AI‑assisted workflow improvements and on-call incident leadership. This role is based in the United States with flexible office expectations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS, Cybersecurity, or related field.
• Hands-on in intrusion detection and IR with cloud-first environments.
• Experience writing SIEM queries for alerting and hunting.

Responsibilities

• Act as senior technical resource for the Detection & Response Team.
• Identify gaps and define strategy/roadmap for the team.
• Build capabilities and automation to improve detection.
• Develop and maintain tooling for detection/response.
• Respond to alerts and lead incidents on on-call.
• Collaborate across security and engineering.
• Hunt for undetected threats in our environment.
• Leverage AI to improve speed/quality of outputs.

Skills

Intrusion detection

Incident response

AI-assisted work

Threat hunting

Python/Go/Ruby

Threat intelligence

Networking fundamentals

Cloud environments

On-call rotation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

EDR

Osquery

Firewall logs

Job description

About Pinterest:

Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, we’re on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.

Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other’s unique experiences and embrace the flexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love? It’s Possible.

At Pinterest, AI isn't just a feature, it's a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact, and we’re looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that. To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we’ll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.

Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think. You can read more about our AI interview philosophy and how we use AI in our recruiting process here.

Pinterest is seeking an experienced Security Engineer to build and improve our detection and response capabilities and adapt to emerging threats to protect our employees and infrastructure. In this role, you will have the opportunity to solve challenging problems and make a meaningful impact on our overall security posture. We are looking for a candidate with a passion for both security and innovation.

What you’ll do:

• Act as senior technical resource for the Detection & Response Team
• Identify capability gaps and help define the strategy and roadmap for the team
• Imagine new ways to improve our detection engineering program and lead efforts to build new capabilities
• Build alerts and automation workflows to improve our ability to detect and respond to external and internal security threats
• Manage logging pipelines and supporting infrastructure, and onboard new logging sources to improve detection coverage
• Develop and maintain internal tooling to expand and automate the team’s detection and response capabilities
• Respond to alerts generated by our tooling and lead incidents as part of an on‑call rotation
• Collaborate with cross‑functional partners across security and engineering
• Hunt for previously undetected threats in our environment
• Leverage AI to streamline and enhance the efficiency, accuracy, and coverage of security engineering

What we’re looking for:

• Broad and deep knowledge of intrusion detection and incident response, with an engineering focus in a modern, cloud‑first environment
• Knowledge of the attacker lifecycle, common attack techniques, and detection methods
• Hands‑on experience writing SIEM queries for alerting, response, and threat hunting
• Experience consuming threat intelligence and applying it to improve detection capabilities
• Familiarity with using multiple sources of telemetry for threat investigations, such as EDR, Osquery, and firewall logs
• Understanding of networking technologies and/or network security, including basic TCP/IP fundamentals
• Depth in ideally macOS internals, or alternatively Linux/UNIX or Windows internals, including persistence mechanisms and privilege escalation techniques
• Scripting or automation experience (e.g., Python, Go, Ruby) for tool development or integration
• Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and quality in your day‑to‑day workflow for relevant outputs
• Strong track record of critical evaluation and verification of AI‑assisted work (e.g., testing, source‑checking, data validation, peer review)
• High integrity and ownership: you protect sensitive data, avoid over‑reliance on AI, and remain accountable for final decisions and deliverables
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, a related field, or equivalent experience

In‑Office Requirement Statement:

• We recognize that the ideal environment for work is situational and may differ across departments. What this looks like day‑to‑day can vary based on the needs of each organization or role.
• This role will need to be in the office for in‑person collaboration 1‑2 times every 6 months, and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

Relocation Statement:

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

We believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise.

Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.

US based applicants only

$177,185—$364,795 USD

Our Commitment to Inclusion:

Pinterest is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. We want to have the best qualified people in every job. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, status as a protected veteran, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other consideration made unlawful by applicable federal, state or local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.