OpenAI· Security· San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, and Remote - US
Security Engineer, Detection and Response
Comp$293K – $385K
Classified Tasks (25)
Automate 0%Augment 68%Human-Only 32%
Augment (17)
AI assists, human decides
Build and operate systems to detect suspicious activity and enable effective responses.
technical
Engineer detection pipelines and tooling.
technical
Develop rule lifecycle management for detection rules.
operational
Implement measurement and quality loops to track detection coverage, precision, and latency.
analytical
Create tuning processes for detection rules and pipelines.
operational
Design and implement safe rollout patterns for detection changes.
operational
Automate response and investigation workflows to reduce toil in triage and enrichment.
technical
Build workflows for containment and evidence capture during investigations.
technical
Reduce time-to-understand and time-to-contain incidents through automation and process improvements.
operational
Identify telemetry and control gaps across platforms and services.
analytical
Implement telemetry or control fixes directly when it is the fastest or most effective path.
technical
Build detections from Kubernetes and cluster telemetry for common failure and attack modes.
technical
Design cloud-agnostic detection approaches across major cloud platforms.
technical
Build tooling and automation where it delivers the most operational leverage.
technical
Threat-model new infrastructure or features and translate findings into concrete D&R requirements for shipping teams.
analytical
Run investigations and improve operational playbooks based on investigative findings.
operational
Design automation and agent-style workflows that keep outcomes measurable, auditable, and safe.
technical
Human-Only (8)
Requires human judgment
Evolve Detection & Response capabilities across infrastructure, products, and research environments.
leadership
Partner with Security teams and system/infrastructure owners to define telemetry and response requirements.
communication
Ensure new systems ship with appropriate telemetry, threat models, and response playbooks from day one.
operational
Define Detection & Response requirements and drive visibility across endpoints, identity, SaaS, cloud, and Kubernetes.
leadership
Prioritize telemetry and control gaps and advocate for fixes with partner teams.
leadership
Evaluate and respond to emergent security concerns in AI research and lab environments.
analytical
Develop detection and response strategies for agents operating across infrastructure at scale.
technical
Evaluate lower-level infrastructure and datacenter risks (e.g., firmware/BMC surfaces, network segmentation, control paths) and implement detection/response measures.
technical
Job description
Security Engineer, Detection and Response | OpenAI Careers ## Security Engineer, Detection and Response Security - San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, and Remote - US Apply now(opens in a new window) **About the Team** Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture. **About the Role** As a Security Engineer on Detection & Response, you’ll help protect OpenAI’s most sensitive assets– including our intellectual property, customer data, and the infrastructure that supports them– by building and operating the systems we use to detect suspicious activity and respond effectively when it matters. You’ll work across endpoints, identity, cloud, hyperscale compute infrastructure, and datacenter-adjacent layers, partnering closely with security teams and infrastructure owners to define the telemetry and response requirements we need and building tooling and automation where it delivers the most leverage. **In this role, you will:** * Build and evolve Detection & Response capabilities across OpenAI’s infrastructure, products, and research environments, with an emphasis on high-signal detection and reliable operational response. * Engineer detection pipelines and tooling: develop rule lifecycle management, measurement/quality loops (coverage, precision, latency), tuning processes, and safe rollout patterns. * Automate response and investigations by building workflows that reduce toil (triage, enrichment, containment, evidence capture) and improve time-to-understand/time-to-contain. * Partner with other Security teams and system/infrastructure owners across the company to ensure new systems ship with the right telemetry, threat models, and response playbooks from day one. * Define D&R requirements and drive visibility across endpoints, identity, SaaS, cloud, Kubernetes: identify telemetry/control gaps, prioritize them, and advocate for fixes with partner teams (and implement directly when it’s the fastest/most effective path). * Evaluate and respond to emergent security concerns in a frontier AI lab environment, such as detection and response strategies for agents operating across infrastructure at scale. **You might thrive in this role if you:** * Have hands-on threat detection and/or incident response experience, including building detections, running investigations, and improving operational playbooks. * Understand modern adversary tradecraft (TTPs) and can translate it into practical detection strategies and response actions. * Bring a threat modeling mindset. You can evaluate new infrastructure or features, identify D&R implications (what could go wrong, what we’d need to see, how we’d respond), and turn that into concrete requirements for teams shipping the system. * Have experience working in Kubernetes/containerized environments, including building detections from cluster telemetry and understanding common failure and attack modes (workloads, nodes, control plane, networking). * Are comfortable reasoning about lower-level infrastructure and datacenter risks, such as firmware/BMC surfaces, network segmentation/telemetry, and hard-to-observe control paths. * Have experience across major cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP, OCI), and can design cloud-agnostic detection approaches where possible. * Like building automation that replaces repetitive D&R work, including thoughtfully using agent-style workflows where they meaningfully reduce toil, while keeping outcomes measurable, auditable, and safe. * Are energized by new problem area