Software Engineering Manager, Cybersecurity

Join Caterpillar as a Software Engineering Manager focused on cybersecurity, where you’ll strengthen security across a division’s application and product portfolio. This onsite role in Peoria, IL combines engineering leadership with security-by-design practices, measurable risk reduction, and dependable delivery outcomes.

What you’ll do

• Lead, hire, coach, and develop an engineering team, setting clear goals and managing performance while building a network of security champions across delivery teams.
• Own the division’s application security improvement roadmap in partnership with central cybersecurity.
• Turn business needs and enterprise policy into prioritized initiatives, including work plans, schedules, resource estimates, and progress reviews.
• Manage team capacity, budgets, tools, and supplier relationships to support effective engineering delivery.
• Review technical standards and architecture/design conformance, resolve delivery constraints, and drive continuous improvement in engineering quality and service effectiveness.
• Embed security into the software development lifecycle with threat modeling, secure code practices, pull-request review, and security testing.
• Guide secure handling of secrets, cloud configuration, and third-party dependencies.
• Establish and document security release gates using approved enterprise processes.
• Ensure API and endpoint authentication, authorization, and access-control reviews are completed and approved before code progresses through environments.
• Accelerate adoption of shared security tools and preventive controls in CI/CD pipelines, using automation and AI-assisted scanning with appropriate oversight.
• Lead vulnerability triage with security experts: validate findings, remove duplicates, apply a consistent severity rubric such as CVSS, assess business impact, and prioritize high-risk issues.
• Assign remediation owners, agree on timelines, and track items to verified closure.
• Escalate risk through established governance, address systemic root causes, and prioritize shared-platform fixes to prevent recurrence.
• Maintain accurate application, asset, and repository inventories with clear ownership mapping.
• Build trustworthy portfolio dashboards covering scan coverage, validated findings, remediation aging, agreed service-level performance, and risk reduction.
• Run regular security progress reviews and communicate decisions, trade-offs, and support needs to stakeholders.
• Coordinate audit evidence, policy alignment, and remediation with central cybersecurity and application security teams.
• Create a shared home for division security guidance, training, and documentation, and coach teams and suppliers to make secure practices sustainable in day-to-day engineering.

What you bring

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, cybersecurity, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong experience as a Software Engineering Manager or demonstrated lead experience.
• Solid software development, architecture, integration, and testing knowledge, including practical experience applying secure development practices to modern applications, APIs, and cloud environments.
• Broad cybersecurity knowledge and hands-on application security judgment, including threat modeling, authentication and authorization, vulnerability validation, remediation, and automated security controls.
• Experience translating security policies and frameworks into engineering controls, supporting audits, and managing risk-based improvement programs with measurable outcomes.
• Practical knowledge of OWASP guidance and security testing tools, including static and dynamic analysis, dependency and secret scanning, and integrating controls into delivery pipelines.
• Experience building security champions, improving engineering practices, and using reliable metrics to drive adoption and recurring-risk reduction.
• Clear communication and program leadership skills, able to influence across teams and explain technical risk in business terms while balancing security, quality, cost, and delivery speed.
• Experience scaling application security across a complex or global enterprise, including product-centric or Agile delivery and collaboration with central security functions preferred.
• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CSSLP, or GIAC, or a related master’s degree, or comparable advanced expertise demonstrated through practice preferred.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits*
• Paid time off plan (Vacation, Holidays, Volunteer, etc.)*
• 401(k) savings plans*
• Health Savings Account (HSA)*
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)*
• Health Lifestyle Programs*
• Employee Assistance Program*
• Voluntary Benefits and Employee Discounts*
• Career Development*
• Incentive bonus*
• Disability benefits
• Life Insurance
• Parental leave
• Adoption benefits
• Tuition Reimbursement

Compensation: USD 147,760 - 240,110 per year.

Location and details

• Onsite in Peoria, IL (and this position requires the candidate to be in Chicago, IL, Peoria, IL, Denver, CO, or Dallas, TX).
• Up to 20% travel
• Onsite five days a week
• Relocation assistance: not available
• Visa sponsorship: not available
• Employment is conditioned upon successful completion of a drug screen.