Staff Engineer, Detection and Response

Apollo.io is the leading go-to-market solution for revenue teams, trusted by over 500,000 companies and millions of users globally, from rapidly growing startups to some of the world's largest enterprises. Founded in 2015, the company is one of the fastest growing companies in SaaS, raising approximately $250 million to date and valued at $1.6 billion. Apollo.io provides sales and marketing teams with easy access to verified contact data for over 210 million B2B contacts and 35 million companies worldwide, along with tools to engage and convert these contacts in one unified platform. By helping revenue professionals find the most accurate contact information and automating the outreach process, Apollo.io turns prospects into customers. Apollo raised a series D in 2023 and is backed by top-tier investors, including Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and more, and counts the former President and COO of Hubspot, JD Sherman, among its board members.

The role
You’ll lead detection and response (D&R) strategy for Apollo’s Security team, and you’ll deliver it hands-on. You’ll build detection systems, response automations and investigation tools in weeks, not months. You’ll lead our most complex incidents. You’ll also set the standards and architecture that let the team catch and contain real threats without depending on any one person.

What you’ll do

Strategy and influence

• Own D&R strategy and turn it into multi-quarter initiatives tied to Security KRs. Report progress and risks to leadership in business terms.
• Work with Engineering, Infrastructure and IT so logging, telemetry and response readiness are planned into their roadmaps early.
• Set D&R standards: detections and response as code, review practices, playbook quality, and AI-assisted workflows.
• Mentor engineers to own detections and lead incidents, and help raise the hiring bar.

Detection engineering and observability

• Own detection architecture and the multi-quarter coverage plan: log sources, enrichment, correlation, alert routing, and cost at scale.
• Own security observability: telemetry onboarding, signal quality, threat intel inputs and alert tuning.
• Run the detection lifecycle: intake and prioritization, unit tests, replay against historical data, attack simulation, and regular reviews of coverage gaps, latency, false positives and MTTD.
• Stay hands-on: ship MITRE ATT&CK-aligned detections, threat hunts and automations in Panther and Python via Git and CI/CD.

Incident response

• Own and improve the IR plan: severity model, roles, escalation, communications, on-call and playbooks for our top scenarios.
• Build IR readiness: tabletop exercises with Engineering, Legal, Fraud and leadership, plus response automation and forensic readiness.
• Measure IR quality (MTTA/MTTR by severity, repeat incidents, action closure) and feed every incident’s lessons back into detections, automation and process.
• Lead high-severity incidents as senior technical lead or incident commander across cloud, SaaS and corporate systems.

AI-native by default
You’ll set the standard for AI-augmented D&R. You’ll use AI and agents for triage, enrichment, investigation and response, with guardrails and human-in-the-loop where it matters. You’ll measure the gains in speed, coverage and signal quality. You’ll also help define how we detect misuse of Apollo’s own AI systems and agent features.

Requirements

• 8+ years in detection and response, detection engineering, security engineering or incident response.
• Track record of leading D&R strategy or multi-quarter initiatives with measurable results.
• Hands-on experience designing detection architecture and shipping detection systems on a modern SIEM (Panther highly valued).
• Strong Python, Git, CI/CD and detection-as-code skills.
• Experience leading high-severity incidents in cloud and SaaS environments and improving the IR process behind them.
• Cloud and SaaS expertise, ideally GCP, plus familiarity with tools like Google Workspace, Okta, GitHub, Slack, Atlassian, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Kandji and Snowflake.
• Sound judgment with incomplete information, and the influence to align technical and non-technical leaders without formal authority.

Nice to have

• Staff, Lead or Principal-level experience at a high-growth cloud or SaaS company.
• AI-assisted triage, investigation or response in production, with a clear view of its limits.
• Public security work (detection content, open-source tools, talks, research) or certifications such as GCIA, GCIH or GCED.

How success is measured

• A D&R strategy tied to Security KRs, with telemetry work committed in other teams’ roadmaps.
• Better detection coverage and precision for top threats, and a tested IR process with faster MTTD/MTTR and fewer repeat incidents.
• AI-assisted triage and response in production, with a measurable drop in manual toil.

Tech stack
Panther (SIEM), Python, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Google Workspace, Okta, GitHub, Slack, Atlassian, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Kandji, Snowflake. AI tools: Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Glean.

The listed Pay Range reflects the total cash compensation inclusive of annual base salary and annual bonus as applicable. For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonus target and annual base salary for the role. This salary range may be inclusive of several career levels at Apollo and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location. Applicants interested in this role who are not located in the US may request the annual salary range for their location during the interview process.

Additional benefits for this role may include: equity; company bonus or sales commissions/bonuses; 401(k) plan; at least 10 paid holidays per year, flex PTO, and parental leave; employee assistance program and wellbeing benefits; global travel coverage; life/AD&D/STD/LTD insurance; FSA/HSA and medical, dental, and vision benefits.

We are AI Native

Apollo.io is an AI-native company built on a culture of continuous improvement. We’re on the front lines of driving productivity for our customers—and we expect the same mindset from our team. If you're energized by finding smarter, faster ways to get things done using AI and automation, you'll thrive here.

Why You’ll Love Working at Apollo

At Apollo, we’re driven by a shared mission: to help our customers unlock their full revenue potential. That’s why we take extreme ownership of our work, move with focus and urgency, and learn voraciously to stay ahead.

We invest deeply in your growth, ensuring you have the resources, support, and autonomy to own your role and make a real impact. Collaboration is at our core—we’re all for one, meaning you’ll have a team across departments ready to help you succeed. We encourage bold ideas and courageous action, giving you the freedom to experiment, take smart risks, and drive big wins.

If you’re looking for a place where your work matters, where you can push boundaries, and where your career can thrive—Apollo is the place for you. 

Learn more here!