Principal Cyber Security Engineer

We are seeking a Principal Cyber Security Engineer with hands-on experience designing, deploying, and optimizing SIEM (Security Incident & Event Management) platforms at scale. The individual will own the end-to-end lifecycle of SIEM capability-from architecture and data onboarding to content engineering, automation, and continuous improvement. The individual will collaborate with SOC analysts, incident responders, threat hunters, IT operations, and application teams to ensure high-fidelity detections, actionable visibility, and reliable, compliant log management.

The Work Itself

• Design and maintain the SIEM architecture, including data ingestion pipelines, parsers, normalization schemas, storage tiers, and retention strategies.
• Evaluate and implement SIEM platform features and integrations; drive upgrades and migrations as needed.
• Onboard logs from diverse sources (EDR, firewalls, IDS/IPS, IAM, AD, DNS, proxies, email security, cloud platforms like AWS/Azure/GCP, SaaS apps, containers/Kubernetes, DBs, identity providers).
• Implement data quality monitoring and SLA-driven dashboards for ingestion health, parser accuracy, and data latency.
• Optimize SIEM performance: indexing, search speed, hot/warm/cold storage, retention, and cost control.
• Implement role-based access control, multitenancy (if applicable), and data governance.
• Ensure high availability and disaster recovery; document and test failover procedures.
• Define KPIs/KRIs (e.g., MTTD, alert quality, data freshness, coverage, false positive rate).
• Handle purple-team exercises and detection gap assessments; drive remediation.
• Provide runbooks, knowledge base articles, and training to SOC and IT teams.
• Align SIEM data handling with regulatory and contractual requirement (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR).
• Implement data minimization, masking, and retention policies, support audits and eDiscovery.
• Partner with IT/Cloud/Data teams to implement logging at source and ensure secure, reliable transport.
• Contribute to security architecture reviews for new systems and applications.

• 5+ years of experience in SIEM engineering or closely related security engineering roles.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or related field; or equivalent experience.
• Proven expertise with at least one enterprise SIEM platform end-to-end, preferably Splunk and Cribl (e.g., Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, QRadar, Elastic Security, Exabeam, Sumo Logic, LogRhythm, Chronicle).
• Strong proficiency in:
• Data parsing and normalization (e.g., regex, grok, KQL, SPL, AQL, Lucene).
• Detection rule creation, correlation logic, and tuning.
• Scripting/automation (e.g., Python, PowerShell, REST APIs, Terraform/Ansible preferred).
• Log source onboarding from Windows/Linux, AD, network devices, cloud services, EDR, and SaaS.
• Hands-on experience integrating SIEM with SOAR, ticketing (e.g., ServiceNow, JIRA), and case management.
• Good understanding of security operations, incident response workflows, and threat detection frameworks (MITRE ATT&CK, NIST 800-61).
• Experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, etc.)
• Experience with cloud logging and security services (e.g., AWS CloudTrail/CloudWatch/GuardDuty, Azure Defender/M365, GCP Audit Logs).
• Knowledge of data pipelines and messaging (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Event Hubs) and storage tiers (object storage, hot/warm/cold).
• Experience with Agile methodologies and collaborative work environments.
• Familiarity with identity and access management, network security, endpoint security, and common enterprise architectures.
• Strong documentation skills and experience with IaC/CI-CD for detection content a plus., * Multiple SIEM platform experience (migrations, hybrid environments).
• Experience with UEBA/behavior analytics and anomaly detection.
• Experience with EDR/XDR integrations and telemetry correlation.
• Exposure to data lakes, lakehouses, or security data fabrics (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery).
• Certifications: GCDA, GCIA, GCFE, GCIH, GMON, Splunk Certified Architect, Microsoft Certified: Cybersecurity Architect, AWS/Azure security certs, CISSP.
• Experience operating in regulated environments (e.g., financial services, healthcare).
• Background in purple teaming, threat hunting, or malware analysis.

Ally’s compensation program offers market-competitive base pay and pay-for-performance incentives (bonuses) based on achieving personal and company goals. Our Total Rewards program includes industry-leading compensation and benefits plus additional incentives that are designed to meet your needs and those of your family so you can get the most out of your career and your life, including:

Time Away: Program starts at 20 paid time off days in addition to 11 paid holidays and 8 hours of volunteer time off yearly (time off days are prorated based on start date and program varies based on full or part-time status and management level).

Planning for the Future: plan for the near and long term with an industry-leading 401K retirement savings plan with matching and company contributions, student loan pay downs and 529 educational save up assistance programs, tuition reimbursement, employee stock purchase plan, and financial learning center and financial coach access.

Supporting your Health & Well-being: flexible health and insurance options including medical, dental and vision, employee, spouse and child life insurance, short- and long-term disability, pre-tax Health Savings Account with employer contributions, Healthcare FSA, critical illness, accident & hospital indemnity insurance, and a total well-being program that helps you and your family stay on track physically, socially, emotionally, and financially.

Building a Family: adoption, surrogacy and fertility assistance as well as paid parental and caregiver leave, Dependent Day Care FSA back-up child and adult/elder care days and childcare discounts.

Work-Life Integration: other benefits including Mentally Fit Employee Assistance Program, subsidized and discounted Weight Watchers® program and other employee discount programs.

Ally Financial is a customer-centric, leading digital financial services company with passionate customer service and innovative financial solutions. We are relentlessly focused on “Doing it Right” and being a trusted financial-services provider to our consumer, commercial, and corporate customers. For more information, visit www.ally.com .