Lead Security Engineer

At Ben E. Keith Company, our legacy is strong-and our future is even stronger.

For more than a century, we've been leaders in fine food and premium beverage distribution, known for delivering excellence and building lasting partnerships. Today, our Food Division spans multiple states, and our Beverage Division brings top beverage brands to communities across Texas.

But what truly sets us apart is our commitment to people. We invest in our employees, empower growth, and create opportunities to make an impact-because when our people succeed, so do our customers and our business. Since 1906, that's been our promise.

Position Summary:

The Lead Security Engineer serves as a senior technical leader within Security Operations, providing strategic direction and hands-on technical leadership across security operations and engineering. This role leads high-severity and enterprise-wide security incidents, drives complex remediation efforts, and partners across teams to strengthen the organization's overall security posture.

The Lead Security Engineer is responsible for developing and executing security strategies, defining detection and response capabilities, leading root-cause analysis, and establishing long-term remediation plans. This position requires deep technical expertise, strong strategic decision-making, and the ability to communicate complex security matters effectively to technical teams, business leaders, and executives.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior technical lead for security operations, engineering, and enterprise security initiatives.
• Lead response efforts for high-severity, complex, and enterprise-wide security incidents.
• Direct cross-functional and multi-team coordination during complex security events, ensuring timely containment, investigation, remediation, and communication.
• Conduct and lead root-cause analysis following security incidents and develop sustainable remediation strategies to prevent recurrence.
• Define and continuously improve security detection strategies, monitoring capabilities, and incident response playbooks.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance across security operations and engineering teams.
• Develop strategic recommendations to improve enterprise, cloud, application, identity, endpoint, and detection security.
• Evaluate security risks and technical options and translate findings into actionable recommendations.
• Partner with infrastructure, application development, cloud, IT, and other technology teams to drive security improvements and remediation efforts.
• Lead complex security initiatives from strategy through execution, balancing technical risk, business priorities, and operational requirements.
• Establish and promote security engineering standards, processes, and best practices.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to security leadership and senior business and technology stakeholders.
• Prepare executive-ready communications that clearly articulate security risks, strategic options, recommendations, and remediation progress.
• Stay current with emerging security threats, technologies, vulnerabilities, and industry best practices to continuously strengthen the organization's security capabilities.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Education & Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or a related field.
• 5+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity, security engineering, security operations, or a related technical discipline.
• Expert knowledge of enterprise, cloud, and application security principles and practices.
• Deep technical expertise across identity security, endpoint security, and security detection engineering.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex security incidents and coordinating response efforts across multiple teams.
• Strong understanding of security monitoring, detection, incident response, threat analysis, vulnerability management, and remediation practices.
• Demonstrated ability to perform root-cause analysis and develop long-term security remediation strategies.
• Strong technical leadership, strategic thinking, and decision-making capabilities.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical and security concepts to both technical and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing security detection strategies and incident response playbooks.
• Experience working across enterprise, cloud, and application environments.
• Experience leading cross-functional security initiatives and enterprise remediation programs.
• Relevant security certifications such as CISSP, GIAC, Security+, or cloud security certifications.

Competencies:

• Strategic Thinking: Understands the broader business and organizational context, anticipates future needs, and develops strategies that support long-term objectives.
• Technical Expertise: Demonstrates advanced knowledge and proficiency in relevant technologies, systems, tools, and industry practices.
• Leadership: Provides direction, establishes priorities, influences others, and leads teams and cross-functional partners toward successful outcomes.
• Problem Solving & Decision Making: Analyzes complex situations, identifies root causes, evaluates alternatives, and makes sound, timely decisions.
• Communication: Clearly and effectively conveys information, ideas, risks, and recommendations to technical, business, and executive audiences.
• Collaboration: Builds productive relationships across teams, facilitates alignment, and works effectively with diverse stakeholders to achieve shared goals.
• Accountability & Results Orientation: Takes ownership of responsibilities and outcomes, follows through on commitments, and consistently delivers high-quality results.

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to safely and successfully perform the essential job functions consistent with the ADA, FMLA and other federal, state and local standards, including meeting qualitative and/or quantitative productivity standards.
• Ability to maintain regular, punctual attendance consistent with the ADA, FMLA and other federal, state and local standards
• Must be able to lift and carry up to 20 lbs

We offer employees the opportunity to make a meaningful impact in collaborative, results-driven environments supported by competitive benefits, including:

• Medical, Dental, Vision & Life Insurance
• 401(k) with Company Match + 100% Company-Paid Profit Sharing
• Paid Time Off & Holidays
• Wellness, EAP & Educational Assistance

At Ben E. Keith, we value a diverse and inclusive workforce where different perspectives drive better decisions and innovation. We are an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer and a VEVRAA Federal Contractor, considering all qualified applicants, including minorities, females, veterans, and individuals with disabilities.