Senior Security Incident Responder

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

• Strengthen Avalara's security posture, operational resilience, and regulatory standing by increasing the Detection and Response team's investigative capacity, programmatic, and sustainable coverage across an evolving enterprise threat landscape.
• Detect, investigate, and contain security incidents within SLA to protect Avalara's customers, revenue, and compliance standing.
• Accelerate capability across the team by delivering runbooks, detection improvements, and automation.
• Embed AI-augmented investigation practices that improve analytical speed, confidence, and scale.
• Improve investigation quality by setting a visible standard of analytical depth and thorough documentation.
• Actively develop the analysts around you by sharing techniques and providing feedback.
• Identify and lead improvements to how the team operates, strengthening response workflows, cross-functional coordination, and metrics that demonstrate security impact to leadership.
• Represent the Detection and Response function with confidence in cross-functional engagements, audits, and stakeholder discussions — reinforcing trust in Avalara's security posture across the organization.

What You’ll Need To Be Successful

• Execute incident response activities and lead related workstreams as the Senior Security Incident Responder.
• Continuously monitor security systems, including Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platforms, software firewalls, and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms. Gather and analyze evidence from affected systems, logs, and network traffic.
• Conduct detailed investigations of security incidents to determine the root cause, scope, and impact. Document all aspects of security incidents, including timelines, actions taken, and lessons learned.
• Develop, document, and implement strategies, runbooks, capabilities, and techniques for incident response.
• Perform forensic analysis of compromised systems to identify the techniques and tactics used by attackers, or as directed by Legal.
• Work cross-functionally with security engineering and other teams to build solutions for analyzing security events at scale and protecting Avalara from threats.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including IT, Security Operations, Legal, HR, and Compliance to manage and mitigate incidents effectively.
• Strengthen KPIs and metrics for measuring response effectiveness and provide detailed reporting to internal stakeholders.
• Stay up to date with the latest security threats, vulnerabilities, and incident response techniques through ongoing training and professional development.
• Act as a subject matter expert in incident response, representing the team in meetings, audits, and presentations.
• Participate in rotating On Call shifts that utilize a paging system in case a security event requires attention.

12-Month Success Signals

• Operates independently across the full incident lifecycle: detection, containment, recovery, and remediation — with quality security ticket notes.
• Demonstrate working knowledge of Avalara's core products, infrastructure, and internal systems.
• Have contributed to the team's collective defense capability through playbooks, knowledge base articles, detection rules, and automation.
• Establish productive working relationships with Insider Threat, Detection Engineering, and Threat Intelligence teams.
• Cross-functional trust and effective communications with IT, Legal, HR, Governance, and Product Stakeholders.

Bar Raiser Expectations

Avalara hires people who make the teams they join measurably stronger. As a Senior Security Incident Responder, you will bring expertise, analytical rigor, and collaborative energy. This elevates the Detection and Response team's collective capability, strengthening how Avalara investigates against an evolving threat landscape.

Qualifications

• 5+ years' experience in Security Incident Response.
• Experience across the information security domain, including familiarity with endpoint, email, network, cloud security, vulnerability management, incident response, and threat intelligence.
• Experience with log analysis, network security, digital forensics, and incident response investigations.
• Leverages advanced data analysis to diagnose root causes, optimize processes, and deliver high-impact solutions.
• Effectively collaborate with different stakeholders.
• Perform and coordinate tasks during high-pressure situations.
• Proficiency in leveraging AI tools within security operations is a plus.
• Ability to script / code using Python or an equivalent language is a plus.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information security, or relevant experience.
• Certifications related to digital forensics and incident response is a plus.

Pay

• Colorado: $148,800 - $245,600 annually
• Washington: $148,800 - $271,500 annually
• California: $148,800 - $297,300 annually
• NYC: $164,500 - $297,300 annually

This role is eligible for an annual bonus based on company performance, depending on the terms of the applicable plan and your role.

Benefits

• Paid time off and paid parental leave.
• Health & Wellness benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.