Director of Detection Engineering

TENEX.AI • Overland Park, KS

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

TENEX is seeking a Director of Detection Engineering to build, lead, and scale the team responsible for creating effective detections that identify real threats within customer environments. This role involves setting the strategic direction for detection engineering, managing and growing the team, and ensuring the function is well-represented to customers and the executive leadership. As an early employee in a rapidly growing, well-funded startup, this position offers significant impact and growth potential.

Requirements

• 10+ years in detection engineering, security engineering, or SOC roles.
• 4+ years of experience leading teams.
• Proven track record in people leadership, including hiring senior individual contributors, scaling teams across multiple locations, performance management, and developing engineers into leaders.
• Hands-on experience in writing, tuning, and retiring detections at scale across SIEM, EDR, and cloud environments.
• Experience in customer-facing and executive-facing communication, including presenting in QBRs, prospect calls, and executive staff meetings.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in an MDR, MSSP, or SaaS security vendor environment.
• Background with multiple SIEM platforms (Splunk, Chronicle, Sentinel).
• Experience with detection-as-code, CI/CD for detections, or automated detection testing.
• Familiarity with AI/ML-assisted detection workflows.

Responsibilities

• Lead and scale the detection engineering team, managing direct reports and a growing team of senior detection engineers across multiple locations.
• Own the detection roadmap, driving threat coverage strategy and managing the full detection lifecycle (build, tune, retire) using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK.
• Represent detection engineering externally by leading discussions in customer QBRs, prospect calls, and internal executive meetings, translating technical details into business value.
• Report on program health, providing executive-level updates on coverage, false positive rates, MTTR, and threat-informed metrics.
• Manage the people function, including hiring senior detection engineers, overseeing performance and career development, and building a team that scales with customer growth.
• Oversee a multi-site team, establishing on-call coverage, cross-site handoffs, and the working model with SOC Analysts, SOC Engineering, and Threat Intelligence.
• Set the quality standards for the team, defining peer review processes, detection testing standards, and key performance metrics.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Opportunity to build and lead the detection engineering function.
• Collaboration with a talented and innovative team.
• A culture of growth and development.
• Opportunities to expand knowledge in AI, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director