Security Engineer.

An engineer who designs, builds, and operates the controls, automation, and tooling that keep systems secure across infrastructure, applications, identity, and detection pipelines. It belongs to the Roles & Careers category of cybersecurity.

An engineer who designs, builds, and operates the controls, automation, and tooling that keep systems secure across infrastructure, applications, identity, and detection pipelines.

A Security Engineer is a hands-on technical specialist who designs, implements, and maintains security controls and tooling. Depending on the team, the role covers cloud and infrastructure hardening, identity and access management, secrets management, application-security automation in CI/CD, detection engineering for the SOC, or SIEM and EDR platform engineering. Security Engineers write infrastructure-as-code, scripts, and detections; integrate scanners and policy-as-code; and collaborate closely with software engineers, SREs, and SOC analysts. They typically report to an engineering or security-operations manager, hold a CS or engineering degree, and carry certifications such as OSCP, AWS/GCP/Azure security, GIAC GCED or GCSA. Senior levels evolve toward staff or principal roles or into security architecture.

Defences for Security Engineer typically combine technical controls and operational practices, as detailed in the full definition above.

Common alternative names include: Cybersecurity engineer, Infosec engineer.