Senior Detection Engineer

Role Description

Instacart's Detection Engineering team sits at the core of our Security organization, building and operating the systems that identify, surface, and respond to threats across one of North America's largest grocery technology platforms. We own the full detection lifecycle — from telemetry collection and signal design to automated response — across a complex, cloud-native environment spanning endpoint, cloud, container, and SaaS.

As a Senior Detection Engineer, you'll be a technical anchor on the team:

• Developing high-fidelity detection logic
• Hunting for novel attacker techniques
• Raising the bar for how we think about coverage, quality, and scale

You'll work closely with Engineering, Red Team, Incident Response, Fraud, and Trust & Safety to ensure our detections reflect real-world adversary behavior — not just signatures.

We operate with a detection-as-code mindset: everything we build is versioned, tested, and deployed through repeatable pipelines. We care deeply about reducing noise, improving analyst efficiency through automation and SOAR, and continuously evolving our coverage as the threat landscape shifts.

If you're energized by hard forensic problems, enjoy translating attacker TTPs into durable detection logic, and want to help shape the future of a growing security function, this role is for you.

About the Job:

• Develop, tune, document, and maintain detection logic across multiple log sources including endpoint, cloud, container, and SaaS products.
• Assist in cyber forensic investigations across a variety of log sources.
• Optimize log ingestion pipelines and telemetry collection to ensure high-quality, actionable security data while managing volume and cost.
• Design and build SOAR playbooks and automation workflows to streamline detection triage, enrichment, and response actions.
• Mentor junior security analysts and detection engineers on threat hunting methodologies, detection logic development, and investigation techniques.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in a detection engineering, incident response, or offensive security role.
• Experience with 1 or more public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Deep understanding of attacker TTPs across modern zero trust environments, including identity compromise, token theft, and abuse of trust boundaries.
• Proficient understanding of macOS internals and telemetry available to identify macOS specific threats.
• Experience implementing detection-as-code workflows including version control, peer review processes, automated testing, and CI/CD deployment pipelines.
• Basic proficiency with Python, Golang, or other programming languages.
• Relevant certifications: GCFA, GCFE, GNFA, GREM, OSCP, GCIA, or similar.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in offensive security or red teaming.
• Knowledge of machine learning for threat detection.

Benefits

• Highly market-competitive compensation and benefits.
• Remote work flexibility.
• New hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants.

For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below:

• CA, NY, CT, NJ: $230,000 — $242,500 USD
• WA: $220,000 — $232,000 USD
• OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI: $211,000 — $222,500 USD
• All other states: $192,000 — $202,500 USD