Engineering Manager I, Threat Detection

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

As Engineering Manager for Threat Detection, you will lead a high-performing team that powers Datadog's detection program. Threat Detection is the organization responsible for keeping Datadog ahead of an evolving threat environment: closing coverage gaps faster, raising the bar on signal quality, and shipping detections that hold up under the scale and complexity of cloud-native infrastructure.

What it asks for · 7

• You have worked in a security operations, detection engineering, or incident response role, building tooling and performing investigations and responding to incidents.
• Strong understanding of modern threat actor techniques and the detection engineering lifecycle.
• Technically credible, with the ability to review detection logic, code (e.g., Python), and the architecture of security systems (AI-driven or otherwise).
• You have built automation systems for security operations workflows: detection platforms, AI-driven detection capabilities, case triage, investigation, response automation, or analyst tooling.
• You have prior experience at a SaaS or cloud infrastructure company where security scale and complexity are first-order challenges.
• You operate with both rigor and pragmatism on production quality. You know when to ship a useful system, when to invest in further evaluation, and when not to ship at all.
• Experienced people leader with a focus on mentorship, team growth, and inclusion.

Also a plus

• You have led or sponsored threat hunts that drove lasting improvements in detection coverage.
• You have translated security research, threat intelligence, or analyst workflows into engineered systems.
• You have designed or operated detection platforms: SIEM pipelines, detection-as-code workflows, CI/CD for security content, or equivalent.
• You have built observability for detection systems: instrumentation for coverage and drift, false positive analysis, or silent failure detection.
• You have built and shipped agentic or ML systems to production. You understand the full lifecycle (data, training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring) and have led teams through it.
• You have designed safety, guardrails, or human-in-the-loop systems for autonomous AI in security domains.

What the job covers

• Lead the strategy, roadmap, and execution of Datadog Security's shift to AI-accelerated detection and response.
• Drive development of high-fidelity detections as a shared responsibility across the organization, ensuring your team's systems and direct contributions raise the bar on coverage and signal quality.
• Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of engineers tackling the hardest problems in threat detection at scale.
• Partner with sister teams across Threat Detection and the broader Security organization so your team's deliverables integrate reliably with the rest of the program.
• Define and track program metrics: detection coverage, signal quality, model and agent fidelity, evaluation pass rates, incident response readiness, and your team's measurable contribution to security operations outcomes.
• Evangelize the team's mission inside and outside the Threat Detection organization, communicating progress, tradeoffs, and bets clearly to security leadership and partner teams.
• Collaborate with the AI Engineering teams and other internal AI initiatives to build on shared infrastructure where it makes sense and invest in security-specific tooling where it does not.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• detection25×
• security14×
• systems10×
• threat10×
• coverage6×
• engineering6×
• organization6×
• response6×
• scale5×
• threat detection5×
• evaluation4×
• infrastructure4×
• platform4×
• bar3×
• build3×
• building3×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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