Senior Manager, Detection & Response (Security Engineering)

Details

Confluent is building a data-streaming platform that moves information in near real time. The Detection & Response organization within Infrastructure Security is responsible for detecting, investigating, and responding to security threats across Confluent's multi-cloud environments, including AWS, GCP, and Azure.

The role leads a distributed team of engineers across North America and India. The team applies modern engineering practices to security, using scalable Kubernetes pipelines, custom ETL jobs, AI-assisted triage workflows, and Confluent's Kafka-based data-streaming platform as its central transport.

Responsibilities

• Own the strategic vision and roadmap execution for Confluent's Detection & Response program across its multi-cloud infrastructure.
• Build, scale, and mentor a distributed global engineering team across North America and India.
• Advance detection engineering and incident response capabilities through modern software practices and large-scale automation.
• Oversee security incident response operations, serving as an escalation point and Incident Commander during high-severity security events.
• Drive post-incident reviews.
• Establish or improve operational metrics to evaluate and continuously improve program maturity.
• Partner with Engineering, Legal, and Compliance stakeholders 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.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in software development, security engineering, or security operations, including 5+ years in direct engineering or security management.
• Proven experience building, coaching, and scaling engineering teams across multiple time zones.
• Deep technical expertise in detection engineering, incident response, and threat intelligence.
• Experience building or operating scalable data or 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, including the 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.

Company Information

Confluent is an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria without regard to protected characteristics. Confluent is an IBM subsidiary that has been acquired by IBM and will be integrated into the IBM organization.