Detection Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Company Description

Sandisk understands how people and businesses consume data and we relentlessly innovate to deliver solutions that enable today's needs and tomorrow's next big ideas. With a rich history of groundbreaking innovations in Flash and advanced memory technologies, our solutions have become the beating heart of the digital world we're living in and that we have the power to shape.

Sandisk meets people and businesses at the intersection of their aspirations and the moment, enabling them to keep moving and pushing possibility forward. We do this through the balance of our powerhouse manufacturing capabilities and our industry-leading portfolio of products that are recognized globally for innovation, performance and quality.

Sandisk has two facilities recognized by the World Economic Forum as part of the Global Lighthouse Network for advanced 4IR innovations. These facilities were also recognized as Sustainability Lighthouses for breakthroughs in efficient operations. With our global reach, we ensure the global supply chain has access to the Flash memory it needs to keep our world moving forward.

Job Description

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Security Engineer to own, design, and continuously improve the security tooling ecosystem that underpins a modern, detection-first Security Operations Center (SOC). This role is deeply technical and hands-on, with primary responsibility for the reliability, effectiveness, and evolution of SOC platforms.

This engineer will act as the L3/L4 technical authority for the security platforms utilized by the SOC-bridging engineering and operations-while also owning EDR health & hygiene, detection engineering enablement, and emerging threat assessment. The role partners closely with SOC analysts, Incident Response, Threat Intelligence, IT Infrastructure, and Architecture teams to ensure tools are resilient, trusted, and aligned to adversary behaviors.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

SOC Tooling Engineering & Ownership

• Engineer, deploy, and maintain all core SOC platforms, including:
  • Malware analysis and sandboxing solutions
  • Analyst workstation environments (Windows investigation VMs)
  • Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR/XDR)
  • Email Security Engineering
  • Vulnerability Scan Engineering
• Act as technical owner for SOC platforms, including alignment with architecture requirements, lifecycle management, upgrades, and decommissioning
• Ensure SOC platforms are engineered for scale, reliability, performance, and forensic integrity
• Partner with IT and platform teams to resolve dependency, access, and infrastructure issues impacting SOC operations

EDR Engineering, Health & Hygiene

• Own EDR platform engineering, configuration, and operational health across the enterprise
• Define and enforce EDR hygiene standards (sensor coverage, policy consistency, versioning, asset attribution)
• Monitor EDR health metrics and proactively remediate gaps impacting detection or response efficacy
• Develop testing frameworks to validate EDR detections, policies, and response actions

Detection Engineering Enablement

• Serve as a technical owner of detection engineering, enabling high-fidelity detections through better tooling, telemetry, and data quality
• Validate that endpoint, sandbox, and supporting tooling generate the telemetry required to support detection logic and investigations
• Collaborate on detection validation, tuning, and testing pipelines
• Translate emerging threats and attacker techniques into tooling and telemetry requirements

Malware Analysis & Investigation Enablement

• Engineer and maintain malware detonation and analysis environments that support safe, repeatable analysis
• Support SOC and IR teams with tooling for static and dynamic malware analysis
• Improve sandbox fidelity to better represent enterprise environments and common attacker tradecraft

Emerging Threat & Capability Assessment

• Assess new attacker techniques, malware families, and evasion tactics for detection and prevention opportunities across the enterprise
• Identify gaps where tooling or configurations do not adequately surface malicious behavior
• Evaluate new security tools and capabilities to address detection, analysis, or response gaps
• Provide engineering-backed recommendations grounded in operational SOC realities

Automation & Reliability

• Automate routine SOC operations including health checks, validation, deployments, and reporting
• Develop scripts and tooling (PowerShell, Python, etc.) to reduce manual overhead and analyst toil
• Improve reliability through monitoring, alerting, and failure-mode testing of SOC platforms

Documentation & Standards

• Author and maintain engineering documentation for SOC platforms, architectures, and configurations
• Define technical standards and guardrails for SOC platforms usage and integrations
• Support audits, tabletop exercises, and incident reviews from a tooling and telemetry perspective

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience
• 5-10+ years of experience in security engineering, detection engineering, or advanced SOC technical roles
• Demonstrated experience supporting SOC operations through engineering and platform ownership

Required Technical Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience with EDR/XDR platforms (e.g., CrowdStrike, Defender, SentinelOne)
• Experience engineering SOC platforms rather than only consuming alerts (platform ownership mindset)
• Strong understanding of Windows internals, Linux operating systems, and server infrastructure, including endpoint and host-level telemetry, process execution, persistence mechanisms, and administrative activity across workstation and server environments
• Experience supporting malware analysis and sandboxing environments
• Familiarity with SOC workflows, detection pipelines, and incident response requirements
• Strong scripting and automation skills (PowerShell, Python)
• Solid grasp of attacker TTPs mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience integrating SOC platforms with SIEM, SOAR, or case management platforms
• Exposure to vulnerability management and scanning platforms
• Experience designing detection validation or purple-team style testing
• Relevant certifications (GIAC, GREM, GCED, GCIA, OSCP) preferred but not required

Success in This Role Looks Like

• High confidence in SOC platform reliability, coverage, and data quality
• Measurable improvements in EDR health, sensor coverage, and detection fidelity
• Faster, higher-quality investigations enabled by well-engineered analyst tooling
• Reduced analyst toil through automation and platform stability
• SOC detection and response capabilities that evolve in step with emerging threats

Additional Information

Sandisk is committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees and will not discriminate against any applicant or employee based on their race, color, ancestry, religion (including religious dress and grooming standards), sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), gender (including a person's gender identity, gender expression, and gender-related appearance and behavior, whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth), age, national origin, sexual orientation, medical condition, marital status (including domestic partnership status), physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, protected medical and family care leave, Civil Air Patrol status, military and veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. We also prohibit harassment of any individual on any of the characteristics listed above. Our non-discrimination policy applies to all aspects of employment. We comply with the laws and regulations set forth in the "Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal" poster. Our pay transparency policy is available here.

Sandisk thrives on the power and potential of diversity. As a global company, we believe the most effective way to embrace the diversity of our customers and communities is to mirror it from within. We believe the fusion of various perspectives results in the best outcomes for our employees, our company, our customers, and the world around us. We are committed to an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive through a sense of belonging, respect and contribution.

Sandisk is committed to offering opportunities to applicants with disabilities and ensuring all candidates can successfully navigate our careers website and our hiring process. Please contact us at [email protected] to advise us of your accommodation request. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying.

Based on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be 08/01/2026 (3 months from posting), although we reserve the right to close the application process sooner if we hire an applicant for this position before the application deadline. If we are not able to hire someone from this role before the application deadline, we will update this posting with a new anticipated application deadline.

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Compensation & Benefits Details

• An employee's pay position within the salary range may be based on several factors including but not limited to (1) relevant education; qualifications; certifications; and experience; (2) skills, ability, knowledge of the job; (3) performance, contribution and results; (4) geographic location; (5) shift; (6) internal and external equity; and (7) business and organizational needs.
• The salary range is what we believe to be the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting.  We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and this range is only applicable for jobs to be performed in California, Colorado, New York or remote jobs that can be performed in California, Colorado and New York.  This range may be modified in the future.
• You will be eligible to participate in Sandisk's Short-Term Incentive (STI) Plan, which provides incentive awards based on Company and individual performance.  Depending on your role and your performance, you may be eligible to participate in our annual Long-Term Incentive (LTI) program, which consists of restricted stock units (RSUs) or cash equivalents, pursuant to the terms of the LTI plan. Please note that not all roles are eligible to participate in the LTI program, and not all roles are eligible for equity under the LTI plan. RSU awards are also available to eligible new hires, subject to Sandisk's Standard Terms and Conditions for Restricted Stock Unit Awards.
• We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid vacation time; paid sick leave; medical/dental/vision insurance; life, accident and disability insurance; tax-advantaged flexible spending and health savings accounts; employee assistance program; other voluntary benefit programs such as supplemental life and AD&D, legal plan, pet insurance, critical illness, accident and hospital indemnity; tuition reimbursement; transit; the Applause Program, employee stock purchase plan, and the Sandisk's Savings 401(k) Plan.
• Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company's sole discretion, consistent with the law.