Defense Engineer

Position Summary

The (USA) Staff, Dynamic Defense Engineer plays a critical role by leading proactive efforts to identify cyber threats that evade traditional security controls. This role requires deep technical expertise, strong judgment under uncertainty and the ability to influence teams without formal authority. The role requires expertise in programming languages, applying ML/AI and behavioral analytics to surface anomalous activity and mentoring other associates.

This role is expected to operate at the intersection of detection engineering and incident response, drive structured threat hunting hypotheses, partner closely with SOC to validate threat hunt findings and measurably decrease threat actor dwell time.

The Threat Hunting Team conducts hypothesis-driven hunts using comprehensive telemetry across identity, endpoints, network and cloud systems. The team's mission is to transform uncertainty into actionable risk awareness by correlating signals and validating adversary behavior throughout the attack lifecycle. The team employs advanced techniques, adversary-focused strategies and data-driven methods that are enhanced by automation, analytics and machine learning. This team plays an important role in continuous integration of lessons learned from threat hunts to ensure evolving threats are addressed proactively and supporting the organization’s strategic commitment to defend the environment against cyber threats.

• Conduct in-depth analysis of cyber threats and attack mechanisms to inform defense strategies.
• Develop and test threat hypotheses based on adversary tradecraft and observed environmental gaps.
• Translate adversary techniques into repeatable detections, analytics, tune and improve detections to reduce false positives and improve signal quality.
• Build and maintain hunting playbooks, workflows and documentation to scale hunting operations.
• Leverage automation, scripting and ML/AI assisted tools to accelerate analysis and reduce manual effort.
• Communicate findings clearly through hunt reports, briefings and actionable recommendations for stakeholders.
• Apply architectural principles to design and evaluate system components for security, performance and reliability.
• Lead proactive threat hunts, escalation and mitigation following established protocols.

• Strong experience in threat hunting, incident response or detection engineering with the ability to operate under ambiguity.
• Deep understanding of adversary TTPs, attack patterns and how real-world attackers bypass controls.
• Proven expertise in cyber threat analysis and emerging threat techniques.
• Strong programming skills in Python and familiarity with coding languages such as SQL, Java, and C for developing and testing security solutions.
• Experience in cyber incident management, including detection, triage, escalation and mitigation of cyber incidents and events.
• Understanding of security engineering principles, network and cloud forensics and cloud security best practices.
• Partner with SOC and Incident Response teams to investigate, contain and eradicate confirmed threats.

At Walmart, we offer competitive pay as well as performance-based bonus awards and other great benefits for a happier mind, body, and wallet. Health benefits include medical, vision and dental coverage. Financial benefits include 401(k), stock purchase and company-paid life insurance. Paid time off benefits include PTO (including sick leave), parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.

You will also receive PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes. The amount you receive depends on your job classification and length of employment. It will meet or exceed the requirements of paid sick leave laws, where applicable. For information about PTO, see Walmart s notices. Live Better U is a Walmart-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates in Walmart and Sam s Club facilities.

Program…