Manager, Security Defense Engineering

You will manage a team dedicated to defending DigitalOcean’s corporate and production environments, reporting to the Director of Security. At the heart of this team's mission lies a commitment to building and maintaining robust systems that keep DigitalOcean's production and corporate infrastructure safe, secure, and defensible. We protect DigitalOcean from internal and external threats by implementing security tools and processes. We collaborate with teams to provide secure-by-design solutions that remove obstacles to productivity, embodying a "yes, and" philosophy rather than "no."

Lead and grow the team

• You will manage, mentor, and hire for a team of 6 infrastructure security engineers and security analysts ranging from junior to staff levels.
• You will support team members’ career growth, manage performance, and ensure the team maintains a high bar for technical execution.

Scale security infrastructure

• You will lead Infrastructure Security engineers in building and maintenance of critical systems including Vault, VPNs, LDAP, and Network IDS sensors.
• You will oversee the maintenance of mission-critical Infrastructure as Code automation, leveraging tools like Ansible, Chef, and Terraform while leading the strategic evolution of IAM and endpoint security for both production and corporate infrastructure.
• Maintain the operational health of the team’s platforms and services by overseeing a sustainable on-call rotation, serving as a secondary escalation point to support your engineers during major infrastructure disruptions or outages.

Mature detection engineering

• You will lead Security Analysts in building a first line of defense, triaging corporate alerts, and building robust detections.
• You will ensure the team effectively monitors for suspicious activity and executes the crucial initial steps of alert triage to activate Incident Response.
• Collaborate closely with ICs and leaders in Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) to ensure the detection pipeline is grounded in reality, building high-fidelity alerts that map directly to potential security incidents and threat actor behaviors.

Build bridges, not walls 

• You will foster strong cross-functional relationships by working closely with ICs and leaders across both corporate and technical teams, including IT, Finance, Internal Audit, and Product Engineering.
• You will lead your team to be proactive "yes, and" partners who help stakeholders navigate security challenges with clarity and confidence.

Experienced management

• You have 2+ years of experience leading a team of security engineers or analysts.
• You are comfortable stepping into a role with 6 direct reports and have a track record of elevating talent across all levels (junior to staff) and keeping them engaged and unblocked.

Technical context

• You possess a deep background in Infrastructure Security, Security Operations, or Security Engineering.
• You lead with technical credibility, providing meaningful feedback on complex systems across Identity (IAM, ZTNA), Infrastructure (VPNs, Endpoint, IDS, Vault), and Security Observability platforms.
• You have direct experience with security monitoring programs and a passion for maturing enterprise defense.

Servant leadership

• You measure your own success by the success of your team.
• You have a track record of defining clear priorities to reduce context switching, clearing operational paths so your engineers and analysts can focus on technical execution, and ensuring they receive visibility and credit for their work.

Empathy & communication

• You translate complex security risks into business context for leadership and teach your team to communicate with empathy and clarity.
• You effectively communicate roadmaps, milestones, target dates, and project status to both your direct leadership and the extended security leadership team.

• $180,000 - $210,000

*This is a remote role.

JR: 2026-7588

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