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Gusto

Senior Security Operations Engineer

Remote

Toronto, Canada

Senior

Full Time

11-09-2025

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Skills

Leadership Python Network Security Incident Response CI/CD Monitoring Architecture Team Management Organization AWS AWS Cloud CI/CD Pipelines

Job Specifications

About Gusto

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 400,000 businesses nationwide.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That's why we're committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

The Security Operations team at Gusto plays a critical leadership role in fortifying Gusto and our customers against the most sophisticated threats, encompassing phishing attacks, insider risks, data loss, and emerging attack techniques. Our distributed team across Eastern and Pacific time zones strategically designs, implements, and optimizes our monitoring and response capabilities, ensuring proactive and impactful threat detection and mitigation across the organization.

We are seeking a highly experienced and influential Security Engineer with 6+ years of demonstrable experience to lead and significantly contribute to advanced security operations and comprehensive vulnerability management initiatives. In this pivotal role, you will drive strategic enhancements within our Vulnerability Management Program and spearhead critical security operations efforts. Your deep expertise in AWS cloud environments, proven ability to lead incident response investigations, and strong proficiency in Python scripting will be essential as you collaborate and influence multiple areas of the company. This is an exceptional opportunity to shape Gusto's security posture and mentor other engineers in a dynamic and high-impact setting.

Here's What You'll Do Day-to-day

Security Monitoring & Detection Engineering: Lead the strategy and execution of our real-time security monitoring capabilities. Architect, build, and fine-tune high-fidelity detections, with a strong focus on our AWS environment. Develop and implement improvements to group-level incident response processes, practices, and tools.
AWS Security Configuration & Automation: Drive the continuous improvement and hardening of our AWS security posture. Architect, deploy, and continuously enhance advanced security tools such as SIEM, EDR, DLP, and security orchestration and automation platforms, influencing their adoption and effectiveness beyond the immediate team. Actively model and configure AWS services (e.g., GuardDuty, Security Hub, AWS WAF) to align with best practices.
Security Operations Tooling & Automation: Design, develop, and implement robust automation frameworks and tools using Python and SOAR tools to significantly improve security operations efficiency, response times, and overall security posture across the organization. This includes creating automated responses to common alerts and integrating various security signals into a cohesive view.
Incident Response & Threat Hunting: Drive critical security incident response efforts, including complex root cause analysis and proactive remediation planning across multiple teams. Proactively hunt for threats within our AWS and corporate environments by developing hypotheses based on threat intelligence and analyzing logs from various sources.
Cross-functional Security Leadership: Act as a principal security advisor to internal users and engineering teams, proactively strengthening and evangelizing Gusto's security culture and secure coding practices. Provide expert guidance on secure AWS architecture and lead the implementation of security controls within CI/CD pipelines.

Participate In The On-call Rotation

As a key member of the team, you will participate in the on-call roster and be responsible for any afterhours critical alert responses.
Leverage insights from on-call duties to proactively identify and suggest improvements to the codebase, system architecture, or team processes to reduce future incidents and improve the organization's security posture.
Use on-call experiences to mentor other team members, share knowledge, and improve the team's overall incident response capabilities.

Minimum Requirements

Here's what we're looking for:

6+ years of progressive experience in security operations, with a significant portion in a lead or senior technical role.
Demonstrated expertise in leading and optimizing security monitoring, incident response, and vulnerability management programs.
This includes architecting and implementing advanced detection capabilities, driving complex incident investigations with comprehensive root cause analysis, and establishing proactive threat intelligence strategies. Proven ability to define and enforce documentation standards that enhance organizational security posture.
Deep expertise in network security, firewall configurations, and advanced security protocols
Strong operational proficiency with compl

About the Company

Launched in 2011 as ZenPayroll, Gusto serves more than 400,000 businesses nationwide. Each year, we process tens of billions of dollars of payroll and provide employee benefits--like health insurance and 401(k) accounts--while helping companies create incredible workplaces. Through one refreshingly easy, integrated platform, we automate and simplify your payroll, benefits, and HR, all while providing expert support. You and your employees will get the peace of mind you need to do your best work. Licensing details: https:/... Know more