Senior Security Engineer - Detection Engineering

About the role

As a Senior Security Engineer in Tesco’s Detection

Engineering team, you will lead the technical design of security-first

infrastructure and deliver high-impact engineering outcomes that protect a

global retail ecosystem serving millions of customers. You will translate

complex threat and risk signals into resilient, testable, and automated

security capabilities across Tesco’s technology landscape. This role blends

deep engineering leadership with a customer-first mindset: preventing

disruption, safeguarding trust, and raising the bar on engineering quality

across cyber defence. You will also mentor engineers and help shape an

innovation agenda that strengthens Tesco’s ability to detect and withstand

sophisticated cyber threats.

You will be responsible for

• Design, build and deploy complex, high‑reliability security capabilities that offer

  proactive visibility into Tesco’s estate and materially reduce risk to customer

  services and operational continuity.

• response integration),

  ensuring maintainable, scalable outcomes.

• Champion

  secure, test‑driven engineering, including code quality, automated testing,

  peer review and repeatable delivery practices across the team.

• Identify opportunities

  and pilot AI-assisted and automation-driven approaches that improve detection

  lifecycle effectiveness (e.g., faster development, tuning, and quality

  assurance), ensuring changes deliver measurable improvements rather than

  novelty

• Coach and

  support junior engineers, building confidence in modern development practices,

  problem-solving, and pragmatic security design decisions.

• Work seamlessly

  with Security Operations, Threat Intelligence, platform teams and

  product/engineering stakeholders to deliver integrated defences—communicating

  clearly, influencing effectively, and fostering an inclusive, high‑performing

  culture.

You will need

• and how to deliver production-grade solutions safely

  (from design through build, test, deploy, operate and improve).

• with

  evidence of writing clean, maintainable code or scripts and applying

  appropriate patterns for reliability, scalability, and operational support.

• with evidence of having developed custom detections and familiarity on

  working with data in an at-scale product.

• (threat-aware design, secure defaults, automated

  tests, and disciplined change control) and how these practices raise the

  quality bar across a team.

• and how they underpin detection and response outcomes (e.g.,

  telemetry sources, detection platforms, triage workflows, and response

  integration).

• fundamentals at scale—how to convert hypotheses about adversary

  behaviour into effective detections, how to reduce noise without impacting

  visibility, and how to sustain quality over time.

• evidence of curiosity, continuous learning, and proactive professional

  development, including sharing knowledge and improving team practice.

• proven ability to foster an environment where diverse perspectives are

  welcomed, engineers are supported, and collaboration is the default.

• exposure to evaluating emerging techniques (including AI-assisted approaches)

  with sound judgement—balancing value, safety, and operational reality.

Desirable:

• Exposure to a core technology landscape and

  strong retail technology awareness, including how customer journeys and

  store/online operations shape risk.

• Demonstrable understanding of security

  evaluation and functionality testing, including validating controls and

  detections against expected outcomes.

• Cloud & container security knowledge,

  including common control patterns and engineering approaches to hardening

  cloud-native services.

• Applied AI for cyber defence familiarity (e.g.,

  AI-assisted engineering, triage support, enrichment), and awareness of AI

  governance / responsible AI considerations.

• Strong research habits and data-informed

  decision making (using insights to tune detections, prioritise engineering

  effort, and quantify improvements).

• Experience working with delivery and operational

  tooling such as GitHub & Jira, and incident collaboration tooling such as

  Zendesk & xMatters.

• Experience with a querying language such as SPL,

  KQL, SQL etc. in a Security Environment.

• Communication and influencing skills across

  engineering, product and security stakeholders; comfort guiding decisions under

  ambiguity and driving change.

• Familiarity with product methodologies and

  security architecture concepts to help shape “secure-by-design” outcomes across

  teams.

Whats in it for you? We’re all about the little helps. That’s why we make sure our Tesco colleague benefits package takes care of you – both in and out of work. Click Here to find out more!

 

• Annual bonus scheme of up to 20% of base salary.

• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus Bank holidays).

• Private medical insurance.

• 26 weeks maternity and adoption leave (12 months service required at the qualifying date) at full pay, followed by 13 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay or Statutory Adoption Pay, we also offer 6 weeks fully paid paternity leave.

• Free 24/7 virtual GP service, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for you and your family, free access to a range of experts to support your mental wellbeing.

• This information is a shortened summary, refer to our policies for full details.

 

About Us You might know us as a supermarket, technology company or even for our award-winning mobile network. Truth is, we’re all of those things, and much more. Our colleagues work with one goal in mind, helping to make every day a little better for our customers, colleagues and communities all over the world. No two customers are the same, neither are our colleagues. 

 

At Tesco, we champion a balance that lets you thrive both in and out of work. Spend 60% of your week collaborating with colleagues at our office locations or local sites and the rest remotely. Whether you're just kicking off your career, juggling passions, or navigating big life events, we're here to support you. We always welcome a conversation about flexible working, so talk to us throughout your application about how we can support. 

 

We're proud to be an accredited Disability Confident Leader, where everyone’s welcome. That’s why we commit to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. If you need support with your application, click here for more information. And if you're interested in joining our team but don't tick every box, don't let that hold you back from applying.