Detection and Response Engineer

About the role

Moniepoint, Africa's all-in-one financial ecosystem and Nigeria's largest merchant acquirer, is looking for an experienced Detection and Response Engineer to join its Incident Response team. The role suits someone who has moved beyond first-line triage and wants to lead investigations from start to finish, then use what they learn to improve detections. You will work closely with the Lead to close detection gaps, drive down MTTD/MTTR and grow toward deeper detection engineering and IR ownership.

Key responsibilities

• Own escalated security incidents end-to-end, including scoping, evidence collection, threat analysis, containment and remediation
• Analyze and reverse engineer malware, extract IOCs, identify TTPs and define detection and response
• Conduct threat hunting and review and give feedback on reported incidents
• Write, test and deploy detection rules (YARA-L or equivalent) through the CI/CD Detection-as-Code pipeline, tune detections to reduce false positives and turn investigation findings into new rule proposals
• Build and maintain SOAR playbooks and security automation, including AI-driven and agentic workflows
• Take part in tabletop, purple-team and threat-intelligence simulations, and turn threat intelligence into detection opportunities
• Work with cloud security, infrastructure and development teams to close systemic gaps, and document incidents, detection changes and threat intelligence
• Keep IR and detection practices aligned with PCI-DSS, ISO 27001 and NIST CSF 2.0, and stay current with cybersecurity trends
• Drive log onboarding and ingestion health, lead threat modeling for critical infrastructure and maintain automated event enrichment pipelines

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Technology or a related field (or equivalent hands-on experience)
• 2-4 years of experience in incident response, SOC operations or detection engineering
• Experience writing or tuning detection rules in a SIEM (Google SecOps or similar) with a rule language such as YARA-L, CQL, KQL or Sigma
• Strong experience with SIEM and EDR platforms, log analysis and end-to-end incident triage
• Working knowledge of MITRE ATT&CK and its mapping to detection coverage
• Strong written communication for incident reports and detection documentation

Required skills

• SIEM and EDR platforms, log analysis, detection rules (YARA-L, CQL, KQL, Sigma)
• Python, JavaScript or a similar scripting language for automation
• Preferred: SOAR platforms, multi-cloud exposure (GCP, AWS), fintech threats, digital forensics or malware analysis, GCIH or CySA+

What we offer

• A clear path toward senior detection engineering and IR ownership, with direct mentorship from a Lead
• Competitive compensation, pension, health insurance and annual bonus
• Culture focused on well-being, learning and knowledge sharing

Hiring process: preliminary phone call with the recruiter, then a technical interview with a Team Lead and a behavioural and technical interview with an Executive team member.