Senior Security Engineer (Detection & Response)

Software Engineering

Who We Are

At Justworks, you’ll enjoy a welcoming and casual environment, great benefits, wellness program offerings, company retreats, and the ability to interact with and learn from leaders in the startup community. We work hard and care about our most prized asset - our people.

We’re helping businesses get off the ground by enabling them to focus on running their business. We solve HR issues. We’re data-driven and never stop iterating. If you’d like to work in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment, are interested in building something meaningful and having fun while doing it, we’d love to hear from you.

We're united by shared goals and shared motivations at Justworks. These are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team.

Our Values

If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in.

Who You Are

Justworks is looking for an experienced security engineer skilled in detection and response, who can help enhance and mature Justworks’ Security. As a Senior Detection Engineer, you’ll design, build, and maintain the detection logic that powers our platform, conduct proactive threat hunting, and drive continuous improvements across our detection and incident handling workflows. You’ll collaborate closely with IT, Engineering, Platform, and other members of the Security team to identify attacker behaviors, build high‑fidelity detections, and strengthen our defenses.

You’ll also play a key role in designing and conducting table‑top exercises, improving processes, and building automation that reduces friction and accelerates response. You’ll help explore how AI can enhance detection, hunting, and operational efficiency.

Your Success Profile

What You Will Work On

Build, tune, and deploy high‑quality detections across our platform
Develop and refine detections using telemetry from EDR, threat intel, endpoint & cloud posture platforms and native AWS cloud services
Conduct proactive threat hunting to uncover threat actor behaviors and detection gaps
Lead security event & incident handling, including triage, investigation, containment guidance, and post‑incident improvements
Build automation and tooling to reduce manual effort and improve detection accuracy
Drive process improvements across detection engineering, incident response, and telemetry workflows
Collaborate with Engineering to ensure high‑quality logging and visibility across AWS environments
Explore and prototype AI‑assisted detection and response capabilities
Contribute to internal playbooks, documentation, and detection engineering best practices
Design and conduct table‑top exercises to validate readiness and strengthen response processes
Note: This position will require participation in an on-call rotation.

How You Will Do Your Work

As a Sr. Detection Engineer, how results are achieved is paramount for your success and ultimately result in our success as an organization. In this role, your foundational knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes are anchored in the following:

Good judgement - the exercise of critical thinking, analyzing and assessing problems and implications, identifying patterns, making connections of underlying issues, understanding risks and developing mitigation strategies, and taking ownership of the outcome.
Resourcefulness - taking a can-do approach, even in the face of obstacles and constraints by assessing what’s in front of you and effectively and efficiently optimizing what you have, whether it's working on something new or thinking about how to do something better.
Teamwork and communication - putting our collective best together through documentation, collaboration, relationship-building, listening, empathy, recruiting, and evangelism.
Influence and leadership - fostering a community of knowledge-sharing, collaboration, mentorship, and forward-thinking.
Skills and knowledge - the capacity to actively learn and apply specific domain knowledge, know-how, and best practices to continually enhance and improve.

In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for:

Camaraderie - Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You’re an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others.
Openness - Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You’re curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others.
Grit - You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You’re committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude.
Integrity - Simply put, do what you say and say what you'll do. You’re honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example.
Simplicity - Be like Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Qualifications

5+ years of hands-on experience in detection engineering, threat hunting, security event analysis, and incident response
Strong understanding of attacker behaviors, malware techniques, and modern threat landscapes
Hands‑on experience with EDR platforms (event analysis, detections, hunting)
Proficiency with AWS security and logging services (CloudTrail, GuardDuty, IAM, VPC Flow Logs, Lambda, etc.)
Experience designing and conducting attack & defend (table‑top) exercises
Demonstrated ability to improve processes, reduce friction, and automate repetitive tasks
Interest in how AI/ML can enhance detection, hunting, and response workflows
Strong communication skills and comfort working cross‑functionally in a fast‑paced environment

This role is based in our New York City headquarters. The base wage range for this position will be $167,500 - $235,000 annually.

#LI-SD1 #LI-Hybrid

Actual compensation is based on multiple factors that are unique to each candidate, including and not limited to skill set, level of relevant experience, and specific work location. Salary ranges for positions based in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location.

For more information about Justworks’ Total Reward Philosophy, including all of the perks and benefits we are proud to offer our team members, please visit Total Rewards @ Justworks.

Diversity At Justworks

Justworks is committed to maintaining a workplace where diversity of identity, culture, and life experience is the norm and is celebrated authentically and respected consistently. Diversity in our work, our people, and our product drives creativity and innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and integrity, competitiveness, and collaboration throughout our business and in the market. We depend on our differences to make our team stronger, our workplace more dynamic, and our product accessible to all of our customers.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or familial status, disability, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. Justworks is fully dedicated to providing necessary support to candidates with disabilities who may require reasonable accommodations. We also provide reasonable accommodations to employees based on their sincerely held religious beliefs, as well as for other covered reasons consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. If you're in need of a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at accommodations@justworks.com. Your comfort and success matter to us, and we're here to ensure an inclusive experience.

Our DEIB Report