Engineering Manager, SDET - AI Detection and Response (AIDR) (Hybrid)

As a global leader in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern organizations. Since 2011, our mission hasn’t changed — we’re here to stop breaches, and we’ve redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced AI-native platform. We work on large scale distributed systems, processing almost 3 trillion events per day and this traffic is growing daily. Our customers span all industries, and they count on CrowdStrike to keep their businesses running, their communities safe and their lives moving forward. We're proud to work for a mission-driven company leveraging AI to transform the way we work. CrowdStrikers drive their careers through flexibility and autonomy while also being expected to contribute to a culture of responsible AI adoption, experimentation, and innovation. We use an AI-first mindset as a force multiplier to proactively and continuously accelerate execution, build expertise, uncover insights, and solve complex problems. We’re always looking to add talented CrowdStrikers to the team who have limitless passion, a relentless focus on innovation and a fanatical commitment to our customers, our community and each other. Ready to join a mission that matters? The future of cybersecurity starts with you.

About the Role:

CrowdStrike is seeking an experienced SDET Engineering Manager to lead our quality engineering efforts within the AI Detection and Response (AIDR) team. In this role, you will lead a team of SDETs responsible for end-to-end validation of AIDR services — a platform that processes millions of AI security events per second and manages petabytes of critical AI data. Your team will own test strategy, tooling, frameworks, and automation across both cloud-side backend services and UI applications, ensuring the system behaves correctly at every stage from individual components to full system behavior.

This is a deeply technical, hands-on leadership position where you are expected to be in the weeds daily — writing code, building test frameworks, debugging complex distributed system failures, and leading by example. You'll set the quality bar not just through strategy and process, but by demonstrating what engineering excellence looks like. While you will grow and mentor your team, you will remain a strong individual contributor who also leads people.

Your team's work spans functional, performance, contract, and chaos/resilience engineering — ensuring that AIDR's services maintain the highest standards of reliability and security as we protect organizations worldwide from sophisticated AI-based threats.

PLEASE NOTE: This role is hybrid, requiring 2-3 days per week on-site at one of the posted locations.

Success Means:

Building and leading a high-performing SDET team while personally remaining deeply technical and hands-on in the codebase

Architecting enterprise-grade test frameworks and automation that validate systems scaling from thousands to millions of requests per second

Driving quality culture across the broader AIDR engineering organization

Partnering effectively with backend, UI, and product teams to embed quality at every stage of the development lifecycle

Attracting, developing, and retaining top quality engineering talent

What You'll Do:

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of SDETs while being hands-on enough to build test frameworks, write automation, develop tooling, and debug complex failures alongside your team

Own and drive testing strategy across functional, performance, contract, and chaos/resilience testing concerns for the AIDR platform

Be in the weeds on production issues — tracing distributed calls, identifying root causes, and writing regression tests to prevent recurrence

Participate actively in code and design reviews — reviewing both your team's work and product code with a quality-first lens, providing guidance on testability and code hygiene

Define and maintain quality gates across CI/CD pipelines, ensuring automated validation is comprehensive and reliable

Partner with backend and UI engineering managers to align on quality standards, shared tooling, and testing best practices

Manage team capacity, sprint planning, and delivery commitments while balancing framework investments with feature validation needs

Contribute to service operations, including improving observability, monitoring, and implementing quality improvements to prevent outages

Recruit, hire, and onboard top SDET talent; conduct performance reviews and support career development

Leverage AI-powered tools and agentic workflows to enhance testing automation and efficiency

What You'll Need:

10+ years of experience in software development/SDET roles, with at least 3+ years in an engineering management role leading SDET or quality engineering teams

Strong hands-on coding ability — able to write production-quality test frameworks, debug complex distributed systems, and contribute meaningfully to the codebase when the team needs it

Proven experience building testing frameworks and tooling for Cloud SaaS products or similar SOA at scale

Experience defining and driving testing strategy at a team or organizational level

Strong debugging skills: ability to spot design flaws, race conditions, and performance bottlenecks in complex distributed architectures

Expertise in at least one of: Golang, Python, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript — Go is our primary backend language, but strong engineers in any of these are welcome

Deep experience in a cloud distributed systems stack: e.g., Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, and/or similar technologies

Experience with cloud services such as AWS, GCP, or OCI, particularly compute and storage offerings

Extensive experience with testing tools and frameworks (e.g., Jest, Cypress, Playwright, JUnit, TestNG, Go testing)

Experience with CI/CD pipelines and integrating automated testing into deployment workflows

Experience developing and deploying in containerized environments (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)

Experience testing REST and/or gRPC APIs and real-time or high-volume data systems

Strong people leadership skills — demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain high-performing engineers while remaining technically hands-on

Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate quality strategy to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Proven experience utilizing AI technologies to enhance decision-making, streamline workflows, and drive business outcomes

Bonus Points:

Previous experience in cybersecurity companies or security-focused products

Understanding of AI/ML security challenges, threats, and mitigation strategies

Experience with low-latency cloud services using gRPC and event-driven messaging systems such as Kafka or Pulsar

Experience with chaos engineering and resilience testing (e.g., Chaos Monkey, Litmus, Gremlin)

Experience with UI test automation and front-end validation frameworks

Experience with performance testing and load generation at scale

Hands-on experience with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and/or Microsoft Azure

Experience leveraging AI and agentic tools to enhance testing workflows and automation

Golang experience

Experience managing teams that own shared testing infrastructure consumed by multiple product teams

Track record of building quality engineering culture from the ground up

Contributions to open source libraries or frameworks

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Benefits of Working at CrowdStrike:

Market leader in compensation and equity awards

Comprehensive physical and mental wellness programs

Competitive vacation and holidays for recharge

Paid parental and adoption leaves

Professional development opportunities for all employees regardless of level or role

Employee Networks, geographic neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to build connec