Security Engineer, Principal Member of Technical Staff

Security Engineer, Principal Member of Technical Staff

QuantumScape is on a mission to transform energy storage with solid-state lithium-metal battery technology. The company's next-generation batteries are designed to enable greater energy density, faster charging and enhanced safety to support the transition away from legacy energy sources toward a lower carbon future. Our Cybersecurity Team sits at the intersection of innovation and protection. We are a driven, collaborative group of security professionals embedded across the business, working shoulder-to-shoulder with engineering, software, cloud, and automation teams to build security into everything we do from the ground up.

If you're passionate about solving hard security problems in a fast-moving, deeply technical environment, you'll feel right at home here.

We need a security engineer who stays ahead of threats, responds decisively when incidents occur, and builds the systems and processes that make us harder to attack every day. Here's what that looks like in this role:

• Serve as a key responder and coordinator during security incidents, leading investigations from detection through containment, eradication, and recovery
• Build and mature a threat intelligence capability that turns raw signals into actionable insights for the business
• Own vulnerability management end-to-end from discovery and prioritization to driving remediation across engineering and infrastructure teams
• Harden network environments by identifying gaps, enforcing segmentation, and ensuring monitoring coverage across on-premises and cloud-connected infrastructure
• Translate complex threat and risk data into clear, prioritized guidance for both technical teams and senior leadership
• Proactively hunt for threats and misconfigurations before they become incidents
• Communicate with clarity and confidence across all levels of the organization, adapting your message to your audience
• Take problems all the way to resolution not just to identification following through, closing loops, and holding yourself and others accountable

As a Principal Security Engineer, you will be a key contributor and trusted advisor across incident management, network security, threat intelligence, and vulnerability management. You will partner with cross-functional teams to reduce risk, improve detection and response capabilities, and build a proactive security posture at scale.

Incident Management: Lead end-to-end incident response activities including triage, investigation, containment, eradication, and post-incident review

Network Security: Assess and harden network architecture across on-premises and cloud-connected environments, ensuring alignment with security best practices

Threat Intelligence: Build and operationalize a threat intelligence program that delivers timely, relevant, and actionable intelligence to security and engineering teams

Vulnerability Management: Own and mature the vulnerability management program across cloud, on-premises, and endpoint environments

Advisory & Cross-Functional Enablement: Act as a security advisor to engineering, infrastructure, and IT teams translating complex security requirements into practical, actionable guidance

Skills You'll Need: Experience: 10+ years of hands-on experience in cybersecurity, with demonstrated depth across incident response, network security, threat intelligence, and vulnerability management

Technical Skills: Incident Response & SIEM: Hands-on experience with SIEM platforms including Google SecOps (Chronicle), Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender and ability to develop and tune detection rules, correlation logic, and response automation

Endpoint & Network Protection: Experience deploying and managing application allowlisting and endpoint control tools such as ThreatLocker; working knowledge of AI-driven network detection and response platforms such as Darktrace

Network Security: Strong working knowledge of network protocols, firewall management, IDS/IPS, NDR tools, and network segmentation principles

Threat Intelligence: Experience with CTI frameworks (MITRE ATT&CK, Diamond Model), threat feeds, and intelligence platforms; ability to produce structured intelligence products

Vulnerability Management: Proficiency with vulnerability scanning platforms including Tenable (Nessus / Tenable.io / Tenable.sc) and experience building risk-based remediation workflows across cloud and on-premises environments

Scripting & Automation: Proficient in Python and/or PowerShell for building detection logic, automation workflows, and security tooling integrations

Cloud Platforms: Working knowledge of Microsoft Azure and/or GCP security services and logging capabilities, including integration with Google SecOps for cloud-native detection and response

Operating Systems: Solid experience across Linux and Windows environments

Education: Bachelor's degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field (required)

Certifications: CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) preferred Relevant certifications such as GCIH, GCFA, GCIA, GCTI, or equivalent advanced certifications are strongly considered.

ONSITE: This position is required to work onsite 5 days per week to meet the minimum essential duties and requirements of this position.

Compensation & Benefits: The expected salary range for this role is from $155,000 to $236,000 and a final salary will be determined by the candidate's experience and educational background. QuantumScape also offers an annual bonus and a generous RSU/Equity package as part of its compensation plan. In addition, we do offer a tremendous benefits plan including employee paid health care, Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP), and other benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. 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 benefits and privileges of employment.