The Next In-Demand Job Title: Security Automation Engineer

These are the roles Hays reported as having the highest salary increase in 2021:

To be clear - these roles aren’t just the highest pay increase across security or even technology - they received the fastest growing pay across all industries. An incredible six out of the top ten roles receiving the highest pay increases are in cyber-security.

This is driven by the increasing demands from a small pool of experienced cyber-security talent. Given the difficulty in hiring and retaining cyber-security professionals, organizations are increasingly moving to automate as much security as they can. In 2022, this is leading to the growth of a relatively new job title: the Security Automation Engineer.

What is Security Automation?

Security automation is the process of automating security-related tasks in order to improve security operations efficiency and effectiveness. Security automation can help organizations to: 

• Detect and respond to security incidents more quickly and effectively
• Streamline and automate security operations processes
• Manage and secure their networks and systems more effectively
• Free up security staff to focus on more strategic tasks

There are a number of different security processes that organizations can automate, including:

• Security incident detection and response
• Vulnerability scanning and management
• Patch management
• Security information and event management (SIEM)
• Identity and access management (IAM)
• Configuration management
• Threat intelligence

What is a Security Automation Engineer?

A security automation engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining security automation solutions. They work with a variety of security technologies to identify and respond to threats. Security automation engineers are essential for organizations that want to improve their security posture and reduce the risk of a security breach.

Security automation engineers must have a strong understanding of security concepts and how to apply them to their organization’s environment. They must also be able to work with other members of the IT team to ensure that the organization’s security solutions are properly implemented and functioning.

The responsibilities of a security automation engineer include:

• Designing, implementing and maintaining security automation solutions
• Developing new ways to protect organizations from threats
• Working with the IT team to ensure security solutions are properly implemented

Example Security Automation Engineer Interview Questions

Interview questions can cover a range of technical (how do you integrate this solution or process) and behavioral (how have you worked with IT to get this done). For example:

• What experience do you have scripting in Python and JavaScript?
• What experience do you have with REST API best practices and usage?
• What are the challenges of security automation?
• How does security automation help improve security?
• What experience do you have with security technologies such as SIEM, firewalls, IDS/IPS, EDR, IAM principles?
• What experience do you have with AWS and cloud services configuration and development?
• What is security automation?
• What are the benefits of security automation?
• What are the different types of security automation?
• How does security automation work?

Finally, if you’re a Security Automation Engineer looking to automate incident response in your cloud environment - check out our Free Trial!