Lead Cybersecurity Detection Engineer

Cox Automotive is seeking an experienced Lead Cybersecurity Engineer to serve as a senior technical voice on our Detection Engineering team, supporting next-generation Cyber Defense across our diverse portfolio of automotive solutions including Dealertrack, Manheim, Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, Central Dispatch, and vAuto.
Reporting to the Director of Cyber Detection Engineering, you'll design, build, and maintain advanced enterprise- and customer-focused detection capabilities - including AI-driven detection agents and automation - while providing hands-on technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers on the team. You'll partner closely with Incident Response, Threat Intelligence, and Vulnerability Management to strengthen detection coverage, with visibility into detection needs across multiple Cox Automotive business units. The ideal candidate will possess expert-level, hands-on knowledge in SIEM implementation and log ingestion, Detection Engineering best practices, Incident Response, and Threat Intelligence, along with strong verbal and written communication skills and a track record of raising the technical bar for engineers around them.
What You'll Do
Cybersecurity Detection Engineering:

• Serve as a senior technical lead for detection engineering, building and maintaining detective solutions that protect Cox Automotive's internal systems as well as its domestic and international businesses.

• Contribute to and help execute the Detection Engineering strategy, roadmap, and objectives.

• Architect and deploy agentic AI systems that autonomously detect, analyze, and respond to security threats across enterprise infrastructure.

• Design multi-agent frameworks where specialized AI agents collaborate on threat hunting, incident investigation, and attack pattern recognition.

• Develop self-improving detection systems that learn from each investigation and automatically enhance detection rules and playbooks.

• Design and implement advanced threat detection techniques using tools such as SIEM, EDR, and SOAR platforms.

• Develop innovative custom detection rules and automated remediation playbooks and alerts tailored to the Cox Automotive's enterprise and customer threat landscape.

• Leverage industry standard MITRE/ATLAS frameworks to identify detection coverage and close gaps.

• Monitor, optimize, and continuously improve detection systems for performance, scalability, and effectiveness.

• Collaborate with Threat Detection and Response team to continuously improve cybersecurity capabilities in identification, management, and response to threats in the most efficient and effective manner.

• Perform attack simulation testing to validate efficacy of use cases.

• Conduct purple teaming exercises in collaboration with the Vulnerability Management team.

• Manage and maintain SIEM/Data Lake data management and log ingestion infrastructure in collaboration with Cyber Defense Engineering counterparts.

• Evaluate, validate, tune, and sunset detections as needed.

• Build and maintain operational guidelines, diagrams, and documentation for security detection and response.

• Provide off-hour support as needed for security administration, detection, and response activities.

Incident Response:

• Collaborate with the Incident Response team to ensure rapid detection and containment of cyber threats.

• Build threat detection logic during incident response to accelerate threat identification and containment.

• Continuously improve detection and response processes based on lessons learned from incidents.

Threat Intelligence Integration:

• Leverage threat intelligence to enhance detection capabilities and proactively mitigate risks.

• Identify and analyze new and emerging threat vectors and incorporate them into detection strategies.

Stakeholder Collaboration:

• Partner with other Cybersecurity, Engineering, and Product teams to ensure successful deployment of detection and response solutions.

• Collaborate with Product teams to design and implement new customer-focused detection and response solutions.

• Communicate detection capabilities, findings, and technical recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders, escalating to leadership as needed.

Governance and Compliance:

• Design and implement processes that adhere to regulatory requirements and industry standards (e.g., GDPR, PCI-DSS, NIST).

• Maintain documentation of detection use cases, processes, and configurations.

Who You Are
Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related discipline and 6+ years of industry related professional experience

• Multi-cloud security experience (AWS, Azure, GCP)

• Experience with AI/ML frameworks and prompt engineering for security applications

• Expert level knowledge of Detection Engineering

• Strong experience with information security, network security, security monitoring, and Incident Response.

• Strong experience with developing SIEM/SOAR detection and automation use cases.

• Working experience with industry standard security technologies and services such as threat intelligence, firewalls, SASE, IPS, endpoint security, DLP, SIEM/SOAR, and Data Lakes.

• Expert level knowledge on the attack kill chain and diamond model.

• 3+ years experience in a cyber defense role

Preferred Qualifications

• OSCP, GSEC, GCIA, GFE, GCFA, CISA, CISSP, CISM, or CIA certification(s)

• Dev Ops / Engineering / Network / System Administration experience

• Experience developing customer-focused detection and response systems

USD 122,600.00 - 204,400.00 per year
Compensation:
Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $122,600.00 - $204,400.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.
Benefits:
The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.
EOE, including disability/vets