Director of Security Engineering
Abnormal Security · Remote - USA
About this role
**About the Role** Abnormal AI protects organizations from sophisticated email and collaboration attacks using behavioral AI. Security is core to the product and to the trust our customers place in us. The Security organization operates a commercial cloud environment and a separate FedRAMP-authorized environment, and we’re pursuing increasingly rigorous federal authorizations as we grow. We’re hiring a **Director of Security** reporting to the **CISO**, leading the **Security Engineering** organization. You will build and scale high-performing security teams, own major security programs end to end, and operate autonomously in the CISO’s absence—representing security to executive leadership, customers, and auditors. This is a role for a deeply technical leader with a software engineering background who has grown into people leadership. You’ve built security teams from the ground up, you write and review code and architecture when it matters, and you believe the best security organizations earn influence through partnership rather than policy enforcement. **Our Security Philosophy** - **Security reduces toil.** If a control adds friction without reducing risk, it is a defect. - **Paved paths, safe by default.** Invest in guardrails, golden paths, and secure-by-default infrastructure so the easy choice is the secure choice. - **Partnership over gatekeeping.** Security succeeds through deep collaboration with engineering, IT, and business teams. - **Engineering-grade rigor.** Treat security problems as engineering problems: automated, measurable, code-reviewed, and continuously improved. **What You Will Do** - Serve as deputy to the CISO: act with full authority in the CISO’s absence and represent security to executives, customers, and regulators. - Lead, coach, and grow managers and senior engineers across **Security Engineering** and **Security Operations**. - Own the security engineering roadmap: **cloud security architecture (AWS-first)**, detection and response, identity, vulnerability management, and secure-by-default platform investments. - Drive cross-functional programs with Engineering, IT, and Product (e.g., AI security governance, data perimeter controls, and federal compliance initiatives). - Set and defend engineering standards: everything as code, automated where possible, measured against outcomes rather than activity. - Build hiring pipelines; raise the bar on every hire; own performance management, promotion cases, and succession planning. - Translate technical risk into business terms for the executive team and board, and translate business priorities into a coherent security strategy. **Must Haves** - **10+ years** in security or software engineering, including **4+ years managing security teams** (ideally managers of managers or equivalent scope). - Strong **software engineering background**: shipped production software and evaluate security solutions like an engineer. - Proven record building and scaling high-performing security teams. - Deep technical fluency in cloud-native environments: **AWS organizations and multi-account governance**, **Kubernetes**, **identity and access**, **detection engineering**, and modern **SDLC security**. - Demonstrated cross-functional leadership: earned trust of engineering leaders and shipped security outcomes through their teams. - Strong written communication: decision-ready documents and alignment asynchronously. - Executive presence: comfortable presenting to C-level leadersh
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