Engineering Leader - Detection & Response (Infrastructure Security)

About the Role:

We are seeking an experienced engineering leader to head our Detection & Response organization within Infrastructure Security. In this role, you will define the strategic vision, technical roadmap, and operational execution for how Confluent detects, investigates, and responds to security threats across our multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).

You will lead and grow a distributed team of high-performing engineers across North America and India. Our team applies modern engineering principles to security—leveraging scalable Kubernetes pipelines, custom ETL jobs, AI-assisted triage workflows, and Confluent’s own data-streaming platform (Kafka) as our central transport. If you are passionate about building real-time, high-throughput security automation and fostering an engineering-first incident response culture, this role is for you.

What You Will Do:

• Own the strategic vision and roadmap execution for Confluent's Detection & Response program across our multi-cloud infrastructure.

• Build, scale, and mentor a distributed, global team across North America and India.

• Drive the evolution of detection engineering and incident response capabilities by utilizing modern software practices with an emphasis on large scale automation.

• Oversee security incident response operations, serving as an escalation point/Incident Commander during high-severity security events and driving post-incident reviews.

• Establish or improve operational metrics to continuously evaluate and improve program maturity.

• Partner closely with Engineering, and stakeholders across Legal and Compliance teams, to integrate detection telemetry and proactive response across the company.

• Champion an engineering-centric security culture focused on automation, noise reduction, and continuous improvement to minimize operational toil for responders.

What You Will Bring:

• 12+ years of experience in software development, security engineering, or security operations, with 5+ years in direct engineering or security management.

• Proven track record of building, coaching, and scaling engineering teams across multiple time zones.

• Deep technical domain expertise across detection engineering, incident response, and threat intelligence. Experience building or operating scalable data/event pipelines, modern telemetry stacks, or stream-processing architectures.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, high-severity security incidents with composure, clarity, and cross-functional leadership.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with a proven ability to translate complex security risks into clear strategic priorities for engineering leadership.

• Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Engineering, or equivalent experience.