Head of Security Engineering

We are seeking an experienced, hands-on Manager / Sr. Manager of SecOps & Cyber Defense to lead, scale, and actively drive our 24/7 security detection and response capabilities in the US, UK, & EMEA.

In this dual-capability role, you will lead a lean, highly technical group of SOC analysts and incident responders while remaining deeply connected to the engineering work. You will sit in the hot seat during major incidents, build high-efficacy detection engineering pipelines across cloud and hybrid infrastructure, and continuously elevate our threat hunting and triage posture.

Leadership & Team Operations

• Manage & Mentor: Lead and mentor a small, high-performing team of SOC Analysts and Incident Response engineers across multiple time zones.


• On-Call & Escalations: Serve as the primary point of escalation for high-severity security incidents, managing the global operational shift structure and continuous coverage model.


• Metrics & Maturity: Define and track key SOC operational metrics (MTTD, MTTR, false positive ratios, incident coverage against MITRE ATT&CK) to drive continuous improvement.


• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Infrastructure, Cloud Platform, DevOps, Corporate IT, Legal, and Compliance teams during critical triage and investigation phases.

Technical Execution & Incident Response

• Incident Management: Drive end-to-end response for major security incidents—from initial detection, containment, and eradication to root-cause analysis and post-mortem reporting.


• Detection Engineering: Design, write, and tune high-precision detection rules (SIEM, EDR, Cloud-native logs) to minimize noise and highlight sophisticated threat activity.


• Forensics & Triage: Perform hands-on digital forensics (memory, disk, network artifact analysis) and reverse-engineer suspicious scripts/payloads when necessary.


• Threat Research & Readiness: Conduct targeted research into emerging threat actor TTPs, zero-days, and cloud vulnerabilities to preemptively fortify detection capabilities and response playbooks.


• Adversarial Testing & Exercises: Lead and participate in regular Red/Purple team operations and executive tabletop exercises to stress-test incident response readiness and validate control coverage.


• Threat Hunting: Proactively hunt for undetected threat actor behavior using internal logs, intelligence feeds, and custom queries.


• SOAR & Automation: Build and refine automated response playbooks using Python, API integrations, and SOAR tools to streamline repetitive analyst workflows.

• 8+ years of dedicated, hands-on experience in SOC operations, threat detection, and security incident response.
• 2+ years of direct people management or formal team leadership experience, preferably overseeing a geographically distributed workforce.
• Deep operational expertise in investigating cloud-native threats (AWS, GCP, or Azure), container environments (Kubernetes, Docker), and modern SaaS infrastructure.
• Advanced proficiency with modern SIEM platforms, EDR/XDR suites, log aggregators, and SOAR tools.
• Strong scripting and automation skills in Python, Bash, or Go to automate triage tasks and query APIs.
• Strong knowledge of network protocols, cloud architecture, identity systems (Okta, Azure AD), and digital forensics fundamentals.
• Proven ability to stay calm, decisive, and communicative under pressure during high-severity security incidents.

• Prior experience in Financial Services, FinTech, Digital Assets, or high-throughput trading environments operating under strict regulatory audit standards (SOC 2, ISO 27001, SEC/FINRA frameworks).
• Relevant industry certifications such as GIAC (GCIH, GCFA, GNFA, GCDA), CISSP, or OSCP.

In an effort to attract, retain, develop and promote the most qualified individuals, CoinDesk is committed to treating all applicants and employees in a nondiscriminatory manner with respect to the terms and conditions of employment, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status/service, physical or mental disability, or any other classification protected by applicable law. This mandate governs all aspects of employment, including recruitment, selection, promotion, training, education, social and recreation programs, compensation, discipline, termination and access to benefits.

CoinDesk is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the application process, please send an e-mail to [recruiting@coindesk.com](mailto:recruiting@coindesk.com) and let us know the nature of your request.