Director of Information Security

Position Summary

Role Purpose

• Own the security function's day-to-day execution.
• Reduce the company's exposure to high-blast-radius security risk, AI agent architecture, and application security.
• Build a mature, auditable, and scalable security program (policy, controls, evidence, reporting) ahead of compliance and customer-trust demands.
• Lead and grow a Security team, providing the people management the function has lacked.
• Serve as the primary technical authority and incident commander for security events.
• Represent Information Security credibly to executives, auditors, customers, and partners.

Key Responsibilities

1. Security Engineering & Vulnerability Management

• Own the AppSec and vulnerability management program (Snyk and adjacent tooling), including pack ownership, CI/CD security gating, and repository risk classification processes.
• Drive vulnerability remediation SLAs and hold engineering accountable to them.
• Continuously mature the program from reactive scanning toward proactive, gated prevention.

2. Incident Response & Forensics

• Act as an incident commander for security incidents, including coordinating cross-functional response, containment, and communication.
• Own the bug bounty and continuous penetration testing disclosure program: triage, validation, remediation tracking, and researcher communication.
• Facilitate post-incident reviews and root-cause analysis, with particular attention to recurring architectural risk patterns.
• Ensure remediation of systemic issues, not just point fixes and elevate platform-level fixes when the same root cause recurs across incidents.

3. Security Architecture & Emerging Risk

• Own security architecture review for new systems, platforms, and AI agent deployments, including AI agent identity and access patterns (eg, cross-app access, delegated identity).
• Maintain security standards for cloud infrastructure, endpoint protection, and network/edge security.
• Partner with IT Operations on identity-related risk (entitlement sprawl, contractor and non-employee access, and access governance) providing the security requirements and risk lens that IT Operations executes against.

4. GRC, Policy & Compliance

• Own the security policy library, risk register, and control framework; keep them current and audit-ready.
• Lead internal and external audits and assessments, coordinating evidence collection across IT, Engineering, and Legal.
• Report program maturity, open risk, and remediation progress to executive leadership on a regular cadence.
• Oversee processes to update and maintain the Enterprise Security Risk Register.

5. AI Governance & Emerging Technology Risk

• Partner with the Chief AI Officer on the security dimensions of AI governance, including enforcement of AI acceptable-use policy and identification of security risk in new AI tooling and agent deployments.
• Provide the security review and risk sign-off for new AI platforms, agents, and integrations prior to broad rollout.

6. Third-Party & Vendor Risk

• Own vendor and third-party security risk assessment for new tools, integrations, and contractors.
• Maintain a defensible, repeatable process for evaluating vendor security posture before onboarding.

7. Security Awareness & Culture

• Own company-wide security awareness programming, phishing simulation, and targeted training following incidents or audit findings.
• Build blameless, clear communications that raise the organization's security literacy without creating fear or confusion.

8. Team Leadership & People Management

• Hire, coach, and develop the Security Engineering team.
• Set team priorities, run performance management, and build a growth path for security engineers.
• Establish team operating rhythm: on-call/incident rotation, backlog grooming, and technical review standards.

9. Executive & Cross-Functional Communication

• Own the security content in recurring executive reporting.
• Represent Information Security in cross-functional forums (Legal, AI governance, IT Operations, Engineering leadership).
• Escalate material risk, resourcing gaps, or unresolved cross-functional blockers promptly and clearly.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years in information security, including meaningful experience in application security, incident response, and security architecture.
• Demonstrated experience running vulnerability management programs at scale (eg, Snyk or comparable tooling).
• Direct incident command experience, including coordinating cross-functional response to significant security events.
• People management experience, ideally building or scaling a security engineering team.
• Working knowledge of cloud security, identity and access management concepts, and modern AI/agent architecture risk.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including comfort presenting to executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with bug bounty/responsible disclosure program management.
• Experience building or maturing a GRC program, including audit and compliance framework experience (SOC 2, ISO 27001).
• Familiarity with AI agent security risk, including MCP-style tool/agent architectures and identity delegation patterns.
• Experience partnering with AI governance or data governance functions.
• Relevant certifications (CISSP, CISM, or equivalent).

Core Competencies

• Incident command and crisis leadership
• Security architecture and risk assessment
• Program and process maturity building
• People leadership and coaching
• Executive communication
• Cross-functional influence without direct authority over partner teams
• Judgment under ambiguity and time pressure