LiteLLM

Senior Security Operations / Detection Engineer

LiteLLM · San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA $220K–$280K Posted 2026-11-05
Salary
$220K–$280K
Type
Full-time
Experience
5+ yr

LiteLLM is an open-source AI Gateway that gives developers a unified interface to LLM providers. We’re looking for a Senior Security Operations / Detection Engineer to build and own detection and response across our infrastructure.

ABOUT THE ROLE

You’ll own what we can see and how we respond: log pipelines, detections, runbooks, alert handling, and incident coordination.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role reporting to our security lead. You’ll work directly with engineering to build and operate a detection and response function suited to a small company. San Francisco is preferred.

You’ll own your roadmap, build and run the tooling yourself, and lead incidents with incomplete information. Strong written communication is essential: you’ll coordinate independently with engineers, customers, and vendors across time zones.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Build and maintain security log pipelines and document coverage gaps.
  • Build, validate, and tune detections across cloud infrastructure, CI systems, identity providers, and internal services.
  • Manage detections as code, with clear documentation and ongoing maintenance.
  • Write and maintain a runbook for every alert.
  • Define severity-based alert response SLAs and own performance against them.
  • Lead incidents from investigation and containment through recovery and follow-up.
  • Produce clear incident timelines, reports, and recommendations.
  • Measure and improve time to detect and contain threats.
  • Automate detection of unexpected identity and access changes and drive remediation.
  • Prioritize improvements based on risk and the needs of a small engineering organization.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

  • 5+ years of relevant experience.
  • Experience building a detection and response function from scratch.
  • Hands-on experience building and tuning SIEM detections, preferably in Splunk, and managing them as code.
  • Experience building log pipelines from cloud and CI systems.
  • Strong familiarity with GitHub, Okta, and cloud audit logs, including their limitations.
  • Experience leading incidents end-to-end and making containment decisions on partial information.
  • Understanding of OAuth, personal access tokens, OIDC, and how attackers abuse authentication systems.
  • Ability to write Python scripts to investigate incidents and automate security operations.
  • Strong independent judgment and experience owning priorities with limited oversight.
  • Clear communication under pressure and a willingness to surface bad news early.
  • Availability to overlap with Pacific working hours.

BONUS POINTS

  • You helped build a detection and response function at a growing technology company.
  • Experience in managed detection and response or incident response across multiple customer environments.
  • Experience partnering closely with engineers in a small, fast-moving team.

WHY JOIN LITELLM?

  • Own detection and response across the environment, from collecting logs to leading incidents.
  • Build a function around the needs of a small company.
  • Work directly with security and engineering to close the gaps you find.
  • Set priorities and implement improvements yourself.

ABOUT LITELLM

LiteLLM provides a unified API for LLM providers, along with routing, authentication, budgets, observability, and governance for production AI systems.

LLMPython
$110K — 10th pctl $270K — 90th pctl
This role’s midpoint $250K vs. market median $180K for Engineering roles
+40%
above median
Based on 10,000+ Engineering roles with disclosed salary ranges tracked on NewJob.
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