Staff Security Engineer
ZendeskJob Description
Join us at Zendesk, where we're on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. We're accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI, automation, and intelligent customer experiences, because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.
We’re seeking a Staff Security Engineer (P8) to join our Threat Prevention Engineering (TPE) team, part of Zendesk’s Cyber Defense Fusion Center (CDFC). In this role you’ll own and drive large-scale security engineering initiatives that blend modern detection, automation, and AI-assisted workflows to reduce risk and improve our ability to detect, investigate, and respond to threats across Zendesk’s cloud and platform environments.
Problems you’ll solve
AI Capability Gap: AI is already woven into how our team works. This role brings the focused technical leadership needed to push that further, owning the roadmap, driving intentional adoption, and turning emerging AI patterns into mature, production-grade security capabilities.
Engineering Capacity & Delivery Velocity: There's more high-priority work than the team can currently absorb. You'll close that gap directly through delivery and indirectly by multiplying what the people around you can accomplish.
Organizational Integration & Control Coverage: A newly absorbed team has created real gaps in control coverage and tooling alignment. You'll own the engineering work that closes them in a structured, risk-prioritized way.
Legacy Technical Debt: Several critical systems are overdue for modernization. You'll lead phased migrations to cloud-native architectures without disrupting what's already running.
Scale of systems you’ll own
Enterprise-scale security data pipelines ingesting and processing telemetry across a large, multi-cloud environment
Kubernetes-native, AWS-hosted containerized security services spanning EKS, Lambda, and supporting infrastructure
A cross-platform tooling ecosystem covering detection, response, cloud security, and threat intelligence that the entire security organization depends on
A centralized agentic automation platform that security engineers and analysts rely on daily to move faster and work smarter
A team-wide AI strategy and roadmap that shapes how every engineer on the team applies AI to security problems
An organizational control framework enforcing technical standards and integrations across multiple business units
What you’ll be doing
You'll own the team's AI strategic roadmap, from evaluating emerging frameworks and running proof-of-concepts through shipping agentic and AI-powered capabilities into production
You'll architect and operate the cloud-native security data infrastructure the team depends on, including detection pipelines, log management, telemetry collection, and data rehydration at enterprise scale
Complex, multi-phase security engineering initiatives will be yours to lead. That means design, stakeholder alignment, phased migrations, and seeing things through to production without disrupting what's already running
You'll build automation-first security workflows, including AI-assisted triage and agentic automations that reduce manual effort and make the team faster
You'll work closely with engineering, platform, cloud, and newly integrated teams to align controls, tooling, and workflows across the organization
You'll set technical direction and raise the bar for the team, mentoring peers in modern security engineering practices and AI tooling adoption
You'll define and track the metrics that actually reflect security outcomes, and use that data to drive continuous improvement
What you bring to the role
You have 8+ years in security or software engineering and have genuinely operated at Staff or Senior scope, owning hard multi-phase projects from whiteboard to production with real outcomes to show for it
You write production-grade Go and/or Python and have built security tooling that people actually rely on, not just proof-of-concepts
You're comfortable designing and running containerized workloads on Kubernetes/EKS and building on cloud-native AWS services
Security fundamentals are second nature: threat modeling, controls architecture, identity and access patterns, and layered defense aren't things you look up
You've built and maintained security data pipelines and log infrastructure at scale and understand the operational realities that come with it
You default to automation and code over manual processes. APIs, IaC, and programmatic integrations are how you think about solving problems
You've moved beyond AI curiosity. You've shipped AI and agentic workflows in real environments and know what governance and validation actually look like in practice
People follow your technical lead without you needing a title to back it up. You communicate clearly, mentor naturally, and make the teams around you better
Preferred Qualifications
Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or experience building agentic AI integrations.
Familiarity with common enterprise security platforms across multiple domains, including endpoint detection and response (EDR), SIEM, SOAR, cloud security posture management, threat intelligence, and data analytics.
Background in detection engineering (detection logic design, alert tuning, false-positive reduction) and SOC collaboration.
Experience designing and operating security data lakes, log rehydration strategies, and large-scale telemetry infrastructure.
Relevant certifications (CISSP, OSCP, AWS Security Specialty) or experience at a enterprise-scale SaaS company.
AI literacy (core expectation)
AI competency is required. Candidates must be comfortable evaluating and integrating AI/LLM tooling into security workflows, building agentic and automated solutions, and establishing validation, governance, and privacy safeguards. You should be able to demonstrate practical, production-oriented uses of AI that improved security outcomes or delivery velocity.
Where and how you'll work
You'll be part of the Threat Prevention Engineering team, a tight-knit & high impact group of six embedded within Zendesk's broader ~40-person Cyber Defense Fusion Center. This is a hybrid role based in Krakow, with two days per week in the office.
Leveling alignment
This role maps to P8 (Staff Security Engineer) in Zendesk’s Job Family Architecture Library: a senior individual contributor responsible for setting technical direction, delivering enterprise-impacting solutions, mentoring others, and influencing cross-team strategy.
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Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.
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