Every security engineer, regardless of experience level, eventually reaches a point where they pause and ask:
What kind of engineer am I?
Not just what tools you use. Not just what your current title says.
But how do you show up?
How do you solve problems?
How do you instinctively approach complexity?
I’ve seen this question (and its answer) surface over and over again in Slack threads during IRs, in 1:1s with mentees, in hallway conversations, in the quiet frustration of mid-career engineers trying to “level up” but not quite sure how.
And after half a decade in the field—from building threat detection pipelines at prominent startups to leading IR and threat detection at one of the largest tech companies on Earth—I’ve come to believe that most of us in security tend to move within a few core archetypes.
Not boxes. Not labels.
Gravity wells.
You may have blended skills, but there’s usually a center of mass—a force that pulls you toward a particular way of thinking, contributing, and growing. And once you can name that?
That’s when your career starts to gain direction.
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Watch the full video breakdown below:
Archetypes: A Language for How We Work
Across every security team I’ve been on, I’ve seen five archetypes show up again and again.
These are less about job titles and more about your operating posture.
How you move through problems, what you prioritize, and what kind of work gives you energy.
The Guardian
You’re the shield. The one who jumps on high-severity alerts before anyone else blinks.
You see logs like other people see spreadsheets in patterns, stories, and subtle shifts. Your radar is constantly scanning for badness.
You live in detection pipelines, SOAR playbooks, and IR processes.
You bring signal out of noise. And when things are chaotic, you’re the one who restores order.
Superpower: Translating alerts into action. Noise into signal. Chaos into clarity.
Growth Edge: Learning to zoom out. Don’t just be good at building detection rules or IR workflows. Learn to ask why this detection matters to the business in the first place.
The Architect
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