What is a Security Engineer?

A Security Engineer at ABB safeguards the technologies that move energy, power, and industry—spanning OT/ICS environments, distributed control systems (DCS), and digital platforms like ABB Ability. You ensure that safety-critical and revenue-generating operations remain resilient, from 800xA control systems in refineries to SCADA environments in power and water. Your work reduces cyber risk while enabling operational excellence across the full customer lifecycle.

This role blends hands-on engineering, standards-driven governance (e.g., IEC 62443, NIST CSF), and customer-facing consulting. You’ll assess risk, design segmented architectures (Purdue Model), deploy monitoring and backup solutions, guide patching in constrained OT environments, and lead incident response with a safety-first mindset. The impact is immediate and measurable: safer processes, higher uptime, audit-ready compliance, and stronger trust with ABB’s industrial customers.

Expect a dynamic mix of fieldwork, whiteboarding, and strategic advisory. You will partner with Sales, Operations, and Service to scope, implement, and validate secure solutions. If you enjoy working where safety, mission-critical reliability, and modern cybersecurity meet, this is a high-leverage role with meaningful outcomes.

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Focus on core OT security fundamentals, your ability to design and defend secure architectures, and clear, practical communication with non-security stakeholders. Interviews at ABB are scenario-driven and outcome-oriented. You will be asked to explain trade-offs, justify your controls, and anchor decisions to standards and operational constraints.

• Role-related Knowledge (Technical/Domain Skills) – Interviewers will test your command of ICS/SCADA, industrial protocols (Modbus, OPC UA, DNP3), network segmentation (zones/conduits), and standards like IEC 62443 and NIST. Demonstrate depth with concrete examples: show how you’ve applied a standard, implemented a control, or measured risk reduction.

• Problem-Solving Ability (How You Approach Challenges) – ABB values structured reasoning under real-world constraints (legacy systems, safety, uptime). Walk through your approach: define objectives, assess impact, consider safety/availability, choose a path, and quantify outcomes.

• Leadership & Influence (Without/With Authority) – You may lead initiatives or guide customers and cross-functional teams. Show how you influence decisions, resolve resistance, and drive adoption of secure practices. Highlight training you’ve delivered, playbooks you introduced, or KPIs you improved.

• Culture Fit & Safety Mindset (Collaboration and Ambiguity) – ABB prioritizes safety, integrity, and customer success. Demonstrate that you respect change control, document thoroughly, and collaborate across engineering, operations, and leadership. Show comfort navigating ambiguity with a calm, methodical approach.

Interview Process Overview

Interviews for Security Engineers at ABB are rigorous but efficient, balancing hands-on technical assessment with scenario-based consulting discussions. You’ll notice an emphasis on industrial pragmatism: interviewers will probe how you adapt best practices to resource-constrained OT environments, respect safety systems, and maintain uptime. Expect a steady pace—focused conversations, targeted exercises, and timely feedback.

ABB’s philosophy is to evaluate how you’ll perform in the field: Can you interpret standards into implementable controls? Can you communicate risk clearly to plant leadership? Can you design a segmented architecture that operations can support? Interviews prioritize clarity of thinking, standards fluency, and measurable outcomes over theoretical trivia.

This visual shows the typical sequence from screening through technical, behavioral, and managerial assessments, ending with offer and onboarding. Use it to plan your preparation windows, mock interviews, and availability for technical deep dives. Keep your examples aligned with each stage: foundational knowledge early, detailed architectures and incidents mid-process, and stakeholder influence stories toward the end.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

OT/ICS Security Foundations & Standards

This area validates your standards fluency and ability to translate frameworks into action. Interviewers will expect comfort with IEC 62443 (zones, conduits, SL-T), NIST CSF 2.0, and the Purdue Model, plus knowledge of safety and operations constraints. You’ll be asked to ground controls in policy, risk, and business impact.

• Be ready to go over:

  • IEC 62443 application: Mapping assets to zones, defining conduits, selecting security levels, writing SR/RE requirements.
  • Purdue Model realities: Interfacing IT/OT, DMZ design, data diodes, jump hosts, remote access.
  • NIST CSF alignment: Identify–Protect–Detect–Respond–Recover tailored to OT.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS), SIL implications, NERC CIP (if power), ISA/IEC 62443 certification paths.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • “How would you justify SL-T selection for a refinery blending area and derive SR controls?”
  • “Design a secure remote maintenance workflow for Level 3.5 with vendor access.”
  • “Map NIST CSF Detect/Respond functions to a brownfield OT site with limited sensors.”

Network Architecture & Protocol Security

You’ll be assessed on segmentation, firewalling, monitoring, and securing industrial protocols. Expect whiteboarding: drawing L2/L3 zones, ACLs, IDS placement, and safe data egress to cloud or enterprise analytics.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Protocols: Modbus/TCP, OPC Classic vs. OPC UA, DNP3, Profinet—threats and compensating controls.
  • Segmentation patterns: L3 zoning, 3.5 DMZ, jump servers, one-way gateways, vendor access brokerage.
  • Monitoring: Passive network monitoring (e.g., Nozomi/Claroty), span/tap placement, baseline techniques.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Time-sensitive networking (TSN), CIP Security, deterministic latency implications.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • “Harden an existing Level 2/3 boundary without downtime; which controls and why?”
  • “Secure Modbus/TCP when crypto isn’t available—what layered defenses apply?”
  • “Place IDS/IPS, taps, and alerting flows for a 3-tier OT network.”

Risk Assessment & Threat Modeling (OT-Focused)

ABB evaluates how you quantify and communicate risk. Your task is to balance safety, uptime, and security while prioritizing remediation realistically.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Risk methodologies: Asset criticality, consequence-driven prioritization, crown jewels identification.
  • Threat modeling: STRIDE adapted to OT, bow-tie analysis, mapping to IEC 62443 SRs.
  • Reporting: Actionable roadmaps, justifying cost and downtime, KPIs and residual risk.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): HAZOP integration, LOPA with cyber considerations, consequence-driven cyber-informed engineering (CCE).

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • “Rank findings for a brownfield plant with end-of-life HMIs, flat L2, and weak remote access.”
  • “Present a one-year remediation roadmap with quick wins and low-downtime actions.”
  • “Explain residual risk to a plant manager who is reluctant to patch.”

Incident Response, Detection & Vulnerability Management in OT

Interviewers want to see playbook thinking tuned to OT realities: limited patch windows, vendor-certified builds, and safety constraints.

• Be ready to go over:

  • IR playbooks: Containment without tripping processes, evidence handling, vendor coordination.
  • Vulnerability handling: Firmware advisories for PLCs, compensating controls, maintenance window planning.
  • Backup and recovery: Gold images, offline backups, config management, tabletop testing.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Forensics on HMIs, network artifact triage, ransomware-specific OT recovery.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • “Walk through triaging anomalous traffic from Level 2 PLCs—what data do you pull first?”
  • “A critical vulnerability affects historian servers—patching is blocked for 60 days. Your plan?”
  • “Design a backup/restore validation for 800xA without disrupting production.”

Secure Deployment, Lifecycle, and Customer Consulting

Success at ABB requires consistent delivery and stakeholder enablement. You’ll be tested on how you implement solutions, train operators, and sustain change.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Hardening/patching: Vendor-certified baselines, whitelisting, secure remote access, jump host policies.
  • Change control: MOC alignment, documentation, acceptance testing, rollback plans.
  • Consulting & training: Workshops, runbooks, KPIs, user adoption strategies.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Integrating cloud/edge analytics securely, zero trust in OT contexts.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • “Propose a secure remote access design, including approvals, logging, and MFA.”
  • “Deliver a training plan for operators on new monitoring dashboards and runbooks.”
  • “Define success metrics and reporting cadence for a 6-month hardening program.”

This visualization highlights recurring focus areas—expect heavier emphasis on IEC 62443, segmentation/architectures, OT incident response, and protocol security. Use it to calibrate your study plan, doubling down on the largest themes and ensuring you have 2–3 strong examples for each.

Key Responsibilities

You will drive security outcomes across the entire customer lifecycle. Day-to-day, you’ll perform assessments, design secure architectures, implement controls, enable monitoring, and refine processes that keep industrial operations safe and resilient. You will collaborate with Sales, Operations, Service, and Customer Engineering to align solutions with real plant constraints.

• Primary responsibilities and deliverables
  • Conduct OT risk assessments and architecture reviews; map findings to IEC 62443/NIST.
  • Design and deploy segmentation, secure remote access, monitoring, and backup/recovery solutions.
  • Build and maintain IR playbooks, runbooks, and documentation fit for audits and operations.
  • Deliver customer training and change management to drive adoption and sustainment.
  • Provide post-deployment support, tuning detections, and tracking KPIs and remediation progress.

You’ll also support proposals and scope refinement, demonstrate solutions, and coordinate with vendors for certified configurations. Expect periodic travel to on-site facilities for discovery, deployment, and validation.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

Strong candidates bring a blend of OT/ICS expertise, network/security engineering, and consulting communication. ABB values hands-on experience in complex industrial environments where safety and availability are paramount.

• Must-have technical skills

  • OT/ICS: DCS/SCADA fundamentals, Purdue Model, zones/conduits, secure remote access.
  • Standards: IEC 62443, NIST CSF, familiarity with ISO/IEC 2700x.
  • Networks/Protocols: VLANs, ACLs, firewalls, VPNs; Modbus, OPC, DNP3, Profinet—risks and compensating controls.
  • IR & VM: OT-tailored incident response, patch management under constraints, backup/restore testing.
  • Tools: Wireshark, passive OT monitoring (e.g., Nozomi/Claroty), vulnerability scanners, SIEM fundamentals.

• Experience level

  • Typically 8+ years in cybersecurity with 3+ in industrial automation/OT environments.
  • Demonstrated delivery of multi-site assessments or implementations; comfort engaging customers/stakeholders.

• Soft skills that differentiate

  • Consultative communication, translating risk to operations and leadership.
  • Influence without authority, change management, training, and documentation discipline.
  • Measured decision-making under ambiguity with a safety-first orientation.

• Nice-to-have (adds an edge)

  • Certifications: CISSP, GICSP, ISA/IEC 62443.
  • Sector familiarity: energy, power & water, oil & gas; knowledge of NERC CIP (power).
  • Scripting for automation/reporting (PowerShell/Python); exposure to secure cloud/edge integrations.

This module provides current compensation insights by region and level so you can calibrate expectations. Consider how travel, regional cost of living, and customer-facing scope can influence total compensation, and be ready to discuss how your experience aligns with senior bands.

Common Interview Questions

Below are representative questions to help you prepare. Expect deeper follow-ups that probe your trade-offs, standards alignment, and operational safety considerations.

Technical / Domain Knowledge

These assess your OT/ICS fundamentals, industrial protocols, and standards fluency.

• How would you apply IEC 62443 zones and conduits to a brownfield plant with flat L2 networks?
• Explain differences between OPC Classic and OPC UA and how you would secure each.
• Describe your approach to securing Modbus/TCP when encryption isn’t supported.
• Map NIST CSF Detect/Respond to a site with limited sensor coverage—what compensating controls?
• How do you validate SL-T and derive SRs for a high-criticality production cell?

System Design / Architecture

You’ll whiteboard segmented architectures, remote access, monitoring, and data flows.

• Draw a Level 3–3.5–4 architecture enabling secure data egress to enterprise analytics.
• Design a vendor remote maintenance solution with approvals, MFA, session recording, and logging.
• Place IDS/taps and define alert triage for a multi-line plant; justify sensor placement.
• Propose a migration from flat VLANs to zone-based L3 segments with minimal downtime.
• How would you integrate one-way gateways/data diodes and what trade-offs arise?

Incident Response & Operations

Focus on playbooks, containment without process impact, and recovery validation.

• An HMI shows signs of compromise during production hours—walk through your first hour.
• A critical PLC firmware vuln cannot be patched for 60 days—your compensating control plan?
• Outline your backup/restore testing for DCS controllers and historian servers.
• What telemetry would you collect first to investigate unusual Level 2 broadcast traffic?
• How do you coordinate IR with vendors and plant operations under strict change control?

Behavioral / Leadership

Demonstrate influence, stakeholder management, and a safety-first mindset.

• Tell us about a time you changed an OT security control to protect uptime—what trade-offs?
• Describe a situation where operations resisted your recommendation—how did you gain buy-in?
• How do you tailor risk communications for technicians vs. plant managers vs. executives?
• Share a time you trained operators on new security tools—how did you ensure adoption?
• Describe how you document decisions and maintain audit-ready artifacts.

Consulting & Customer Interaction

Show that you can scope, deliver, and sustain solutions with measurable value.

• Walk through your discovery process for a multi-site assessment—what assets and data do you prioritize?
• How do you create a 6–12 month remediation roadmap with phased quick wins?
• Provide examples of KPIs you track post-deployment to prove security and uptime benefits.
• How do you handle scope creep mid-project while protecting delivery timelines and quality?
• Describe a challenging customer environment and how you adapted your approach.

Scripting / Automation (If Applicable)

Lightweight tasks to demonstrate practical automation and analysis.

• Write or describe a script to parse Windows Event Logs for failed RDP attempts and summarize by source.
• How would you automate configuration backup verification for key OT assets?
• Describe how you would enrich IDS alerts with asset criticality to reduce false positives.
• Outline a script to validate firewall ACLs against an approved conduits matrix.
• How have you used Python/PowerShell to accelerate assessment reporting?

Use this module to practice interactively on Dataford. Drill by category, simulate follow-up probes, and time-box your responses to mirror ABB’s interview pacing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How difficult are ABB Security Engineer interviews and how long should I prepare?
Interviews are challenging and standards-driven, with practical scenarios. Most candidates benefit from 3–5 weeks of focused prep on IEC 62443, OT architectures, and IR in constrained environments.

Q: What distinguishes successful candidates?
Clear translation of standards to controls, credible field examples, and strong communication with operations and leadership. Those who quantify impact (uptime, risk reduction, audit readiness) stand out.

Q: What is ABB’s culture like for this team?
Professional, safety-first, and customer-committed. Teams value collaboration, documentation discipline, and measured decisions that respect both security and operations.

Q: What is the typical timeline?
Processes can move quickly—often about one to two weeks from screening to decision, depending on scheduling and role level.

Q: Is the role remote or on-site?
Many roles are hybrid with travel to customer sites; specifics vary by location and team needs. Confirm expectations with your recruiter for the target region.

Q: Will I need to travel?
Yes, many Process Automation roles involve significant travel for assessments, deployments, and validations. Be ready to discuss availability and prior field experience.

Other General Tips

• Anchor to IEC 62443: Map every architecture and control decision to zones/conduits and SRs—this is the lingua franca across ABB’s OT programs.
• Prioritize safety and uptime: Always explain change control, rollback plans, and validation steps; this reassures operations and interviewers.
• Bring artifacts: Redact and bring sample diagrams, runbooks, and dashboards (if allowed). Visuals make your experience tangible.
• Quantify outcomes: Uptime preserved, incidents averted, MTTD/MTTR improved, audit findings closed—numbers prove value.
• Practice whiteboarding: Rehearse drawing segmented OT networks and remote access flows in under 10 minutes with clear narration.
• Pre-build a 30-60-90 plan: Show how you’ll assess, stabilize, and optimize an environment in your first three months.

Summary & Next Steps

The Security Engineer role at ABB is a high-impact opportunity to protect critical operations across energy and industrial sectors. You will translate frameworks into resilient architectures, lead incident response fit for OT realities, and drive customer adoption of secure practices—without compromising safety or uptime.

Concentrate your preparation on IEC 62443 application, OT network segmentation, protocol security, and operational IR/VM. Build two strong case studies, rehearse whiteboarding, and prepare measurable outcomes from your past work. Use the modules above to calibrate your expectations and accelerate practice.

You’re stepping into a role where engineering craftsmanship meets mission-critical security. Prepare with intent, communicate with clarity, and lead with a safety-first mindset. Explore more insights and interactive prep on Dataford, and move forward with confidence—your experience can directly secure the systems that run the world.