Director, Security Engineering & Operations

About this role

ABOUT PAYSCALE

Payscale is the pioneer of compensation intelligence, helping organizations make smarter pay decisions that drive business performance. For more than 20 years, Payscale has combined trusted market data with AI-powered technology to deliver actionable insights that turn pay from a cost into a catalyst for growth. The Payscale Intelligence Cloud portfolio of solutions — Ascent, JobNav, and Paycycle — empower top companies and businesses like Cintas, Leidos, Chipotle, Ohio State University, and TJX Companies.

Create confidence in your compensation. Payscale.

To learn more, visit www.payscale.com http://www.payscale.com.

Job Summary

The Director, Security Engineering & Operations directs, manages, and leads Payscale’s

Security Engineering and Eecurity Operations functions. This is a hands-on leadership role:

the Director sets strategy and manages the team while remaining directly engaged in

architecture, tooling, automation, and incident command. Responsibilities span the design

and hardening of security controls, threat detection and incident response, vulnerability

and exposure management, endpoint and identity protection, and security automation

across Payscale’s corporate, cloud, and hosting environments. The Director owns

Payscale’s MDR relationship and is accountable for the maturity, performance, and

roadmap of both functions.

This role reports to the CISO, VP - Cybersecurity & Enterprise Technology.

What You'll Do

Leadership & People Management

- Direct, manage, and lead the security engineering and security operations team

members; own hiring, onboarding, performance reviews, and career development

plans aligned to Payscale’s Information Security Career Ladder

- Set strategy and quarterly/annual objectives for both functions and translate them

into a prioritized, measurable roadmap; hold regular 1:1s and team connects to

maintain a high-performance, feedback-rich culture

- Mentor engineers and analysts at all career levels, providing task-based directives,

technical coaching, and growth-oriented feedback

- Own the on-call rotation and after-hours escalation path across both functions,

ensuring coverage for time-sensitive detection and response

- Serve as a working leader — remaining hands-on in engineering, architecture, and

incident response rather than leading solely through delegation

Security Engineering

- Own the design, implementation, and continuous hardening of security controls

across corporate, cloud, and hosting environments

- Build and maintain security automation and integrations — SOAR, detection-as-

code, and infrastructure-as-code guardrails — to scale coverage without adding

headcount

- Engineer and operate the security tooling stack (EDR/XDR, SIEM, identity

protection, DLP/CASB, vulnerability scanning), ensuring platforms are well-

integrated and meet architectural standards

- Partner with Engineering and Infrastructure to embed “secure by design” into

CI/CD, cloud architecture, and product development

- Drive adoption of a zero-trust methodology across identity, endpoint, network, and

application layers

- Lead security engineering for enterprise AI and agentic tooling adoption, building

controls and guardrails for safe internal use

Security Operations & Incident Response

- Drive the threat detection and incident response capability: detection engineering,

playbook development, tabletop exercises, and continuous improvement of

MTTA/MTTR metrics

- Lead or oversee incident response events as the designated incident manager for

significant or multi-team incidents, running incident command end-to-end

- Own the MDR relationship, holding the provider accountable to SLAs, coverage,

and response outcomes

- Extend detection and response to secure enterprise AI and agentic tooling

adoption

Vulnerability & Exposure Management

- Own the vulnerability and exposure management function across all corporate and

hosting environments, coordinating cross-functionally on mitigation and

remediation with clear SLAs

- Expand security monitoring, visibility, and coverage using existing platforms and

open-source tooling

Program, Metrics & Stakeholder Engagement

- Own the security engineering and operations portion of the Information Security

program roadmap, delivering operational metrics, risk-posture data, and capacity

analysis

- Establish and report security KPIs to technology and executive leadership on a

regular cadence

- Collaborate with the GRC team on ISO 27001 and SOC 2 evidence, control

effectiveness, and audit readiness as it relates to security engineering and

operations

- Lead technical evaluations of emerging security vendors and technologies; provide

buy/build/partner recommendations to technology management

- Represent security engineering and operations in cross-functional product,

engineering, and infrastructure initiatives, ensuring security requirements are

incorporated by design

What We're Looking For

- 10+ years in information security, including 4+ years in a lead or management role

across security engineering and/or security operations functions

- Proven people-management track record: direct reports, performance cycles, and

team development in a security context

- Expert, hands-on knowledge of both security engineering (controls design,

automation, tooling integration) and security operations (detection, incident

response) — capable of acting as architect, engineer, incident handler, lead, and

manager

- Experience with the CrowdStrike Falcon platform (EDR, Identity Protection, Data

Protection, AIDR, ZTA, Exposure Management) and SIEM/SOAR orchestration

-…