---
title: 'Staff Detection & Response Engineer at Kikoff'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-detection-response-engineer-kikoff-san-francisco-2mbq85xewnt2'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-26'
---

# Staff Detection & Response Engineer at Kikoff

- **Company:** Kikoff
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $338k–$387k
- **Posted:** 2026-09-11
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-26
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/kikoff/jobs/4400740009

## Job description

Kikoff: The Fintech Powering Financial Security at Scale Kikoff is a profitable, pre-IPO fintech company on a mission to empower everyone to achieve financial security. With record revenue growth in 2025 and a unicorn valuation, we've built a suite of products that help millions of people build credit, access liquidity, and save money. We're scaling fast. Join us if you want to build something meaningful and help millions of people move forward financially.

Why Kikoff:

This is a consumer fintech startup, and you will be working with serial entrepreneurs who have built strong consumer brands and innovative products. We value extreme ownership, clear communication, a strong sense of craftsmanship, and the desire to create lasting work and work relationships. Yes, you can build an exciting business AND have real-life real-customer impact.

Kikoff protects millions of customers and their financial data. This role owns the Detection & Response pillar: how we see what's happening across our environment, how fast we know when something is wrong, and how well we respond when it is.

You will own and dictate the detection and response roadmap. You define the detection strategy, decide what gets built versus bought, and drive the program from "we have tools" to "we have coverage we can prove." This isn't a SOC analyst seat. You're building the detection capability for a fintech handling sensitive financial data, and you'll have real ownership from day one.

In This Role, You Will

Own the Pillar

- Own the D&R roadmap end to end: telemetry strategy, detection engineering, alert quality, response process, and the metrics that prove coverage
- Decide our detection architecture. What we log, where it lands, what we build in-house, and where our partner tools fits.
- Set the bar for signal quality. Kill noisy alerts, tune what stays, and make on-call sustainable

Build Detection

- Design and maintain detection coverage across AWS (CloudTrail, GuardDuty, VPC flow), endpoints (SentinelOne EDR), identity (Okta), SaaS, and CI/CD
- Write detections as code: versioned, tested, mapped to real threats against a consumer fintech
- Build the audit logging and telemetry pipelines that give us visibility at scale, including data access monitoring and detections for AI/agentic activity in our environment
- Threat model what an attacker actually does to a company like ours, and detect for that, not for a generic MITRE checklist

Run Response

- Own the incident response lifecycle: triage, containment, forensics, postmortem, remediation tracking
- Level up our incident process in [incident.io](http://incident.io): runbooks, severity definitions, escalation paths, tabletop exercises
- Lead technical investigations, including insider risk and unauthorized access cases

Enable the Team

- Build and run the InfoSec on-call rotation with real runbooks, not tribal knowledge
- Automate response where it's safe: enrichment, containment actions, ticket hygiene
- Be the calm, technical voice in an incident who engineers trust

## Qualifications

- 6+ years in security with meaningful detection engineering and incident response experience in cloud-native environments (AWS strongly preferred)
- You've written detections yourself: SIEM rules, or detection-as-code pipelines, and you've owned the false positive rate that came with them
- Hands-on incident response experience. You've led real incidents, not just participated in them
- Strong command of Cloud Native logging and detection surfaces
- Experience with EDR at fleet scale and identity-based detection
- Fluency in at least one language for automation (Python, Go, Ruby, or similar)
- Comfortable in a fintech regulated environment

Bonus Points

- You've stood up a detection program from scratch or near-scratch
- Detections for AI/LLM and agentic system abuse
- Insider threat and unauthorized access investigation experience
- Consumer fintech or financial services background

Base Range $337,700—$387,200 USD

## Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Kikoff Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing equal employment opportunities and considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.

Please reference the following for [more information](https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/22-088_EEOC_KnowYourRights_10_20.pdf).

## About Kikoff

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Kikoff is a personal financial technology company that builds credit, manages debt, and unlocks financial opportunity for underserved consumers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Cynthia Chen (CEO & Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Consumer Fintech, Credit Building, Personal Finance
- **Target customers**: B2C – individuals seeking to build or improve credit scores, manage debt, and access affordable financial services.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: Empowering everyone to achieve financial security, no matter where they’re starting from.

## Products & Services
- **Credit Building ($5/month)**: A credit-builder loan that reports to major credit bureaus with no interest and no hidden fees.
- **Rent & Bill Reporting**: Reports on-time rent and utility payments to credit bureaus to help users build credit from everyday bills.
- **Secured Credit Card**: A card designed to help users establish or rebuild credit responsibly.
- **AI-Powered Debt Negotiation**: Complimentary service that uses AI to negotiate debt reductions for users (over $8M in debt relief since 2024).
- **Identity Theft Protection**: Monitoring and alerts for identity fraud.
- **Fynn (AI Credit Coach)**: Launched in 2026, an AI-powered coach providing personalised financial guidance.
- **Grant & Catch**: Additional products in the ecosystem (likely focused on grants and savings/catch-up features).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (unicorn status inferred from growth and investor profile).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue surpassed **$300M** in 2025, more than doubling year over year while maintaining profitability since 2023.
- **Total Raised**: $42.5M (Series C)
- **Notable Investors**: Core Innovation Capital, Coatue, Lightspeed, Portage, Notable Capital (and 12+ others)
- **Growth Signals**: Profitable since 2023; reached $300M+ revenue in <7 years; 1M+ customers; 80M+ credit points boosted; 30K+ mortgages and 433K+ auto loans opened after using Kikoff; appointed CFO John Kaelle and CLO Robert Mahnke in 2026, signalling public-market readiness.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Radically affordable pricing** ($5/month for credit building vs. industry $300+) removes barriers for low-income users.
- **AI-first approach** for debt negotiation and credit coaching creates scalable, personalised solutions.
- **Proprietary technology** builds the entire stack in-house, lowering costs and enabling faster iteration.
- **Strong unit economics** and profitability demonstrate operational discipline uncommon at this growth stage.

## Strategic Focus
- **Continued product expansion** – adding new financial tools (Grant, Catch, Fynn) to create a one-tap financial security platform.
- **Deepening leadership bench** with IPO-experienced executives to prepare for future public listing.
- **Investing in AI and automation** to replace legacy systems and deliver faster, more accessible outcomes.
- **Scaling customer impact** – targeting underserved millions through low-cost, high-access offerings.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven culture** with real impact: 1M+ customers helped, $8M in debt relief, 80M+ points boosted.
- **Financial stability** – profitable since 2023 with rapid revenue growth, reducing risk of layoffs.
- **Strong values in action**: "Company First, Ego Last", "Act Like an Owner", "Customer Obsessed", "Think in Years, Act Today", "Be Candid & Kind".
- **Comprehensive benefits**: Health benefits, flexible PTO, 401k matching, commuter benefits, fitness benefit, office lunches & dinners.
- **Hybrid/Office setting** in San Francisco (132 Hawthorne Street) – likely a collaborative in-office culture with team meals.
- **Growth trajectory** – team is "growing rapidly" (as stated on careers page), offering ample career advancement opportunities.
- **Engineering and AI focus** – investing heavily in technology, making it an exciting environment for engineers and product builders.

## Sources
1. [about.kikoff.com/careers](https://about.kikoff.com/careers)
2. [about.kikoff.com/company](https://about.kikoff.com/company)
3. [cbinsights.com/company/kikoff](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/kikoff)
4. [businesswire.com](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260421425245/en/)

## Other roles at Kikoff

- [Staff Data Scientist, Grant](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-data-scientist-grant-kikoff-san-francisco-raj3d8j0xms3) — San Francisco, CA
- [Revenue Accountant](https://feeny.ai/job/revenue-accountant-kikoff-san-francisco-dyhb40b0fe40) — San Francisco, CA
- [Sales Development Representative, Enterprise](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-representative-enterprise-kikoff-phoenix-k4txqhdwv8wq) — Phoenix, AZ
- [Sales Development Representative, Kikoff Ambassadors](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-representative-kikoff-ambassadors-kikoff-phoenix-qgcv0benvv1b) — Phoenix, AZ
- [Sales Development Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-manager-kikoff-phoenix-4rz9ec6wh4v0) — Phoenix, AZ
- [Senior Frontend Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-frontend-engineer-kikoff-san-francisco-hk2y8568720c) — San Francisco, CA
- [Growth Marketer](https://feeny.ai/job/growth-marketer-kikoff-san-francisco-z6qfyqyv9v1h) — San Francisco, CA
- [Accounting Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/accounting-manager-kikoff-san-francisco-35fan94cvwqg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Mobile Engineer – Kikoff Main App](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mobile-engineer-kikoff-main-app-kikoff-san-francisco-0wzv43tw9hbe) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Security Engineer, Data Security](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-security-engineer-data-security-kikoff-san-francisco-s22nr407yw3d) — San Francisco, CA