Security Automation Engineer, Utrecht

Northwave is a leading European cybersecurity specialist, protecting organisations against increasingly complex digital threats. With deep expertise in offensive and defensive security, behaviour, and monitoring, we support our customers through managed security services and high-impact consultancy. Our Security Operations Center plays a central role in this mission, operating as a high-trust, high-precision environment where technology and expertise come together.

To further strengthen this foundation, we are expanding our engineering capability within the SOC platform.

The role As a Automation Engineer, you are responsible for designing, building, and evolving the technical stack that powers our Security Operations Center. You work at the intersection of engineering, automation, and security operations, ensuring that our monitoring platform scales reliably and remains operationally sharp.

You design deployment pipelines that enable seamless onboarding of new customers and use cases. You develop intelligent correlation and deduplication mechanisms so analysts and clients only see alerts and vulnerabilities that truly matter. You also create and maintain a centralized view of customer implementations, giving the SOC immediate insight into active configurations, use cases, and points of contact.

Your work directly impacts how efficiently our SOC operates and how effectively we protect critical infrastructure across Europe.

Technology&environment You will work in an environment where engineering quality and operational reliability are essential:

Python for automation, orchestration, and building smart internal tooling

APIs for integrating and connecting security and monitoring systems

GNU/Linux environments with strong command-line usage

Networking fundamentals for designing, operating, and troubleshooting monitoring setups

Security-by-design as a default, not an afterthought

Who you are

You are an engineer who prefers systems over slogans. You like understanding how things actually work in production and improving them where they break, slow down, or create noise.

You have a done a similar job for at least 2 years.

You are comfortable working close to operations. You do not need everything fully specified upfront, and you are able to translate practical SOC needs into technical solutions that hold up under pressure.

You take ownership of what you build and feel responsible for keeping it understandable, maintainable, and secure.

You communicate clearly with analysts and engineers, make pragmatic choices, and focus on outcomes rather than theoretical perfection.

What we offer:

Competitive salary, paid on the 25th, with annual review and 8% holiday allowance

Pension through Nationale Nederlanden, Northwave contributes 50%, including partner pension

25 vacation days plus all Dutch national holidays

Generous special leave for marriage, birth, bereavement, care and parental leave

Lease car based on salary scale (electric welcome), or choose€0.23/km plus 50% of the lease budget as mobility allowance

MacBook, phone and accessories fully provided

€200 net annual allowance for flexible and remote working

Alleo budget for sports, wellness and leisure of your choice

Learning budget from€700 to €1,200 per year, up to €4,500 for longer programmes

Referral bonus when you bring in a great new colleague

Hybrid working from a modern office in Utrecht

Personal growth through the Role Model and FeedForward cycle, your ambitions and development front and centre

Why Northwave At Northwave, this role sits close to real security operations. The systems you build are used daily by SOC analysts and directly affect how incidents are detected, escalated, and resolved.

You are not building demos or side projects. You are improving a production SOC stack that protects real organizations. Decisions are made quickly, technical input is taken seriously, and improvements are implemented rather than parked on a roadmap.

You work with experienced professionals in an environment that values competence, responsibility, and getting things right.

Interested in building systems that are used under real pressure, not in theory? Contact Youri Roelofs at .

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