Security Engineer, Detection and Response
- Salary
- $200K - $325K
- Level
- Mid
- Work type
- On-site · San Francisco
Not stated in the posting: visa.
Open. First seen 2 October 2026.
About the role
Serval's standard text
Who We Are
Serval is an AI-native automation platform transforming how enterprises operate. We build intelligent agents that understand real-world workflows and execute them end-to-end — replacing manual processes and rigid legacy systems with adaptive, learning software. Founded in early 2024, Serval is already trusted by companies like Fox, Notion, Perplexity, Vercel, and Brex to automate high-volume, high-friction operational work across their organizations.
At the core of Serval is an agentic AI platform that turns natural language into production-grade workflows. Our agents don’t just respond to requests — they reason, take action across systems, and continuously improve with usage. What began with operational use cases has quickly evolved into a horizontal AI automation layer used across IT, HR, Finance, Security, Legal, and Engineering.
Our mission is to eliminate repetitive, manual work across the enterprise and give teams leverage through intelligent automation. Long term, we’re building the universal AI operations layer — a system of agents that sits across business functions and runs the workflows that keep modern companies moving.
We’re backed by leading investors including Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Meritech, First Round, General Catalyst, Elad Gil, and others.
Role Overview
As Detection and Response Lead, you'll build and scale the foundations of Serval's cybersecurity detection and response operations. You will set the strategy and drive execution for security monitoring, incident response, recovery, and post-incident improvement across our infrastructure and the systems our customers trust us to operate in.
You'll be a hands-on leader with deep technical credibility and strong operational instincts. You will build and mentor a team, partner closely with Engineering and Product, and ensure that detection and response capabilities are embedded by design into the systems that power Serval.
What You'll Do
- Design, implement, and operate detection and response operations, including continuous monitoring, triage, investigation, containment, and remediation of security events across a diverse set of networks and infrastructure.
- Build, lead, and directly mentor a team spanning observability, detection and response, and threat intelligence, hiring and scaling these functions deliberately and proportionately as Serval's platform and customer footprint grow.
- Ensure world-class operational rigor and readiness through incident playbooks, on-call and escalation paths, tabletop exercises, and continuous improvement of response quality and speed.
- Improve detection quality and coverage by partnering with engineering teams to ensure critical telemetry is available, reliable, and actionable across cloud, corporate, and production environments.
- Partner deeply across Engineering, Product, and Infrastructure to embed detection and response into Serval's systems by design rather than as an afterthought.
- Build a security program capable of withstanding sophisticated adversaries, including by using Serval's own agents to solve frontier security and security-operations problems.
What You'll Need
- Have 10+ years in cybersecurity with deep expertise in detection engineering, incident response, and security operations.
- Have deep experience building and leading detection and response, instrumentation/observability, and threat intelligence teams.
- Have stellar leadership skills and a demonstrated history of driving durable, continuous improvements to programs, processes, and people.
- Have exceptional written and verbal communication skills, can remain calm under pressure, and can effectively run command of security incidents involving numerous stakeholders across a diverse gamut of teams, expertise, and seniority.
- Have deep expertise in modern observability stacks (e.g., SIEM, data lakes, EDR, cloud telemetry, logging) and detection primitives.
- Understand modern adversary tradecraft (TTPs) and have demonstrated experience translating it into practical detection strategies and response actions.
- Are mission-oriented, have unimpeachable integrity, and are passionate about detecting and responding to adversaries in a highly complex, fast-paced environment.
Serval's standard text
What We Offer
- Impact: Be a key player in shaping the success of our product and company.
- Growth: Build a fundamentally new AI product offering with the support of our experienced team and investors. Grow rapidly with the company.
- Culture: Join a culture that values innovation, ownership, accountability, and fun.
What this role asks for
Particular to this role
SIEM
Rare in Serval's other 19 open postings.
Standard for security roles
Cybersecurity
Common in security postings at any company.
In most of Serval's ads
Vercel
Named in most of its open postings, whatever the role.
62% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Serval's standard text, folded away below.
Read against Serval's other open postings on this site.
The team: Engineering HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 13 open in Engineering. 2 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in August: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Vercel (13 of 13), AWS (6 of 13), Golang (6 of 13), Kubernetes (6 of 13), Terraform (6 of 13), TypeScript (5 of 13), Cybersecurity (4 of 13)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Security Engineer, Corporate posted Oct 7
- Automation Engineer posted Sep 3
- Software Engineer Intern posted Jul 13
- Engineering Leadership posted Jul 9
- Deployment Success Engineer posted Jun 25
- Security Engineer, Infrastructure posted Jun 24
- Security Engineer, Application posted Jun 23
- Software Engineer, Deployed posted Apr 8
- Software Engineer, Infrastructure posted Jan 29
- Software Engineer, Agent Systems posted Nov 14
- Software Engineer, Backend posted Aug 12
- Software Engineer, Frontend posted Aug 12
From the team and dates on Serval's own job board.
See Security Engineer salaries in San Francisco →
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