Security Operations Engineer

Security Operations Engineer

About the Team

The Security Operations team plays a critical role in protecting CircleCI’s infrastructure, product, and customer data against an evolving threat landscape. From incident response to hardening our cloud and CI/CD environments, the team works closely with engineering to keep CircleCI secure, resilient, and ready for what’s next.

About the Role

As a Security Operations Engineer, you’ll play a key role in protecting CircleCI’s infrastructure, product, and customer data against an evolving threat landscape increasingly shaped by AI-driven attacks and AI-augmented defenses. This intermediate-level role offers the opportunity to take meaningful ownership of security challenges, work closely with Engineering as a trusted security partner, and expand your impact across the organization. You’ll contribute to our security roadmap while leveraging AI tooling to advance how we detect, respond to, and automate security threats across CircleCI.

What You’ll Do:

Threat Detection & Incident Response

• Monitor, investigate, and respond to security threats across CircleCI’s cloud and application environments, using security and AI-assisted tooling to improve detection and triage.
• Participate in security risk assessments, incident response, post-incident reviews, and rotating on-call support, turning findings into stronger controls and processes.

Security Engineering & Architecture

• Build and maintain security tooling, controls, and automation across cloud, application, and CI/CD environments, following established security patterns and best practices.
• Identify vulnerabilities and configuration risks, contribute to security runbooks and compliance requirements, and develop a growing understanding of CircleCI’s security architecture.

AI & Security

• Incorporate AI-powered security tools into day-to-day workflows and help evaluate emerging technologies that can improve detection, response, and automation.
• Stay current on AI-specific security threats and contribute to responsible approaches for using AI in security operations.

Cross-Team Partnership & Ownership

• Partner with Engineering teams to understand security needs, provide practical guidance, and translate technical risks into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Contribute to security roadmap planning, technology evaluations, and team documentation while building strong relationships across Security and Engineering.

What You’ll Bring:

• 3+ years of security engineering or security operations experience, or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
• Hands-on experience with cloud, application, and CI/CD security, ideally in AWS, GCP, or Azure environments.
• Experience with security incident response and common security tooling, including EDR, CNAPP, SASE, vulnerability scanners, and log analysis.
• Ability to build and maintain security automation and tooling, with experience in languages or technologies such as Go, Python, or Terraform.
• Strong security judgment and problem-solving skills, with the ability to assess risk, make recommendations, and take action when information is incomplete.
• Hands-on experience using AI/ML-powered security tools in a production environment, with an understanding of where AI can improve security workflows and where human judgment remains essential.

Bonus Skills (Nice to Have)

• Familiarity with AI-specific threat categories (prompt injection, model supply chain risks, LLM abuse patterns).
• Experience securing developer platforms, SaaS environments, or CI/CD infrastructure.
• Relevant certifications: CEH, AWS Security Specialty, Security+, or equivalent.
• Contributions to team process improvement, security runbook development, or internal knowledge sharing.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

About CircleCI

CircleCI is the world’s largest continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform, and the hub where code moves from idea to delivery. As one of the most-used DevOps tools - processing more than 3 million jobs a day - CircleCI has unique access to data on how the most effective engineering teams work, and the tools to help software companies successfully leverage the power of AI into their commercial applications. Companies like Hinge, HuggingFace, and Samsung use us to improve engineering team productivity, release better products, and get to market faster.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in downtown San Francisco with a global, remote workforce, CircleCI is venture-backed by Base10, Greenspring Associates, Eleven Prime, IVP, Sapphire Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Baseline Ventures, Threshold
Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Owl Rock Capital, Next Equity Partners, Heavybit, and Harrison Metal Capital. 

CircleCI is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.