Job Specifications
Want to help pets live their best lives?
We’re proud to be where the pets go and where the pet people go. If you want to make a real difference, create an exciting career path, feel welcome to be your whole self and nurture your wellbeing, Petco is the place for you.
Our core values capture that spirit as we work to improve lives by doing what’s right for pets and people.
Pet First – Protect & Empower. All pets should Live their Best Life. We put the needs of pets and pet parents at the center of everything we do.
Foster the Fun – Connect & Bond. Our Passion for pets brings us together! We celebrate the journey of pet parenthood through district experiences, products, and services.
Let’s Go! Own & Commit. We are stronger as One Petco team. We bring our unique superpowers and champion authenticity in everyone to drive success.
About Petco
We’re proud to be "where the pets go" to find everything they need to live their best lives for more than 60 years — from their favorite meals and toys, to trusted supplies and expert support from people who get it, because we live it. We believe in the universal truths of pet parenthood — the boundless boops, missing slippers, late night zoomies and everything in between. And we’re here for it. Every tail wag, every vet visit, every step of the way. We are 29,000+ strong and together we nurture the pet-human bond in more than 1,500 Petco stores across the U.S., Mexico and Puerto Rico, 250+ Vetco Total Care hospitals, hundreds of preventive care clinics and eight distribution centers. In 1999, we founded Petco Love. Together, we support thousands of local animal welfare groups nationwide and have helped find homes for approximately 7 million animals through in-store adoption events.
We're seeking a hands-on Security Operations Manager to lead security monitoring, incident response, and platform engineering for our retail, corporate, and ecommerce operations. This is a player-coach role requiring deep technical execution (60-70% of time) and team leadership.
This position owns our 24/7 security operations capability, manages core security platforms, leads incident response efforts, and drives critical security engineering projects to completion. The role works closely with our external managed security service provider (MSSP) and serves as the technical escalation point for security events affecting stores, ecommerce platform, distribution centers, and corporate infrastructure.
This role is based in San Diego, California.
What You'll Do
Incident Response & Threat Management (25%)
Lead real-time response to security incidents, making containment and remediation decisions that minimize business impact
Manage escalations from our MSSP and make rapid triage decisions on security alerts
Conduct post-incident reviews and drive remediation of root causes
Develop and maintain incident response runbooks, playbooks, and procedures
Security Platform Engineering & Architecture (40%)
Own architecture, deployment, and optimization of security operations stack including SIEM, EDR, NDR, SOAR, and related detection/response platforms
Drive complex security engineering projects from conception through production deployment, including enterprise-scale initiatives like secure web gateway deployments, network security architecture, and cloud security tooling
Develop detection rules, automation workflows, and integrations to improve mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and mean-time-to-respond (MTTR)
Design and implement security solutions protecting network infrastructure, cloud environments, and data across retail locations, corporate, and ecommerce operations
Troubleshoot complex security platform issues and optimize configurations for performance and efficacy
Vendor & Partner Management (10%)
Serve as primary technical liaison with our managed security service provider, managing SLAs, escalations, and service quality
Evaluate and onboard new security technologies and services
Coordinate with networking, cloud, and infrastructure teams on security architecture decisions
Team Leadership & Development (25%)
Directly manage and mentor a team of 3 security professionals
Provide technical direction, skill development, and career coaching
Build team capabilities in key areas like cloud security incident response
Maintain on-call rotation and ensure team readiness for 24/7 incident response
Set clear performance expectations and deliver regular feedback
Required Qualifications
5+ years hands-on information security experience with at least 3 years focused on security operations, incident response, or security engineering
2+ years people management experience leading security analysts or engineers
Proven track record executing complex security platform or infrastructure deployments from start to finish
Hands-on technical expertise with at least 3 of the following platform categories:
SIEM platforms (e.g., Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Chronicle, Elastic, Sumo Logic, DataDog)
Endpoint Detection