Engineering Manager, Detect & Respond

About the Role

Betterment’s mission is to make people’s lives better through smarter financial tools, and protecting that trust is where security comes in. As Engineering Manager of Detection Engineering, you’ll lead the team responsible for building and operating Betterment’s security detection capabilities. You’ll own the strategy and execution for how we detect threats across our cloud infrastructure, SaaS ecosystem, and product, giving your team the direction and support they need to do their best work.

You’ll partner closely with Security Engineering, IT, Risk, and Engineering leadership to mature our detection program, balancing the delivery of new capabilities with the operational rigor our customers and business depend on. You’ll be a hands‑on leader who can go deep on the work while also driving the roadmap, growing your team, and translating security priorities into engineering outcomes.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below is the base salary range for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees.

• New York City: $175,000 - $215,000

This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus.

• Detection Program Strategy
  :
  Own, drive, and execute the Detection Engineering roadmap, balancing new capability development with the operational health of existing systems, including driving threat‑informed, TTP‑aligned detection development across the team.
• Detection Quality
  :
  Maintain and refine the measurement framework for detection health, coverage, precision, false‑positive rates, and safe rollout practices, holding the team to a continuously improving bar.
• Threat Modeling
  :
  Set expectations for how the team engages with engineering and infrastructure partners on new systems, ensuring D&R requirements (telemetry, threat models, response playbooks) are defined before systems ship.
• Incident Response Leadership
  :
  Lead or oversee the team’s response to security incidents, ensuring clear ownership, fast time‑to‑contain, and strong post‑incident review practices.
• Team Leadership
  :
  Mentor and grow a team of detection engineers, investing in their craft and careers.
• External SOC Partnership
  :
  Partner with our external SOC to define scope, improve triage quality, and identify opportunities to hand off well‑defined alert handling.
• Cross‑functional Collaboration
  :
  Work with IT, Risk, Compliance, and the broader Security Engineering team to understand security priorities and translate them into engineering work. Represent Detection Engineering across the organization, making security work legible to non‑security teams and building strong stakeholder relationships.
• Engineering Quality
  :
  Hold a high bar for engineering quality, automated testing, proper observability, documented runbooks, and maintainable code.
• Compliance
  :
  Lead the team through audits (SOC 2, ISO 27001, etc.), ensuring detection infrastructure supports compliance evidence and control requirements.

We are seeking a team member with 7+ years in security engineering or operations, and 2+ years managing security or detection engineering teams including senior engineers.

• Player‑Coach
  :
  Track record as a true player‑coach, comfortable going deep on technical problems while also leading people and programs.
• Detection Expertise
  :
  Strong background in SIEM platforms (Splunk preferred), detection‑as‑code practices, and threat‑informed detection development including familiarity with adversary TTPs and frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK.
• Incident Response
  :
  Experience leading or overseeing incident response, establishing IR playbooks, and driving post‑incident review practices.
• External SOC
  :
  Experience working with or managing an external SOC, defining escalation paths and performance expectations.
• Cloud & Tooling
  :
  Familiarity with cloud environments (AWS), endpoint security (Crowd Strike or similar), and identity platforms (Okta or similar).
• Engineering Quality
  :
  Passion for engineering quality; hold the team to the same…