Senior Director, Engineering – Proactive Offense

Get to Know Us Horizon3 is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find and fix and verify exploitable attack vectors before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZeroTM platform, delivers production-safe autonomous pentests and other key assessment operations that scale across the largest internal, external, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. NodeZero has been adopted by organizations of all sizes, from small educational institutions to government agencies and Global 100 enterprises. It is used by ITOps/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.  We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools, false positives resulting in alert fatigue, blind spots, "checkbox” security culture, cybersecurity skills shortage, and the long lead time and expense of hiring outside consultants. Collectively, we are a team of learn it alls, committed to a culture of respect, collaboration, ownership, and results.   WHAT YOU’LL DO As Senior Director of Engineering for Proactive Offense, you’ll set the engineering direction and build the organization that turns offensive security research and capabilities into dependable, customer-facing NodeZero products. You’ll lead through engineering managers, technical leaders, and senior individual contributors across multiple teams, balancing technical judgment with organization-wide strategy and execution. You’ll shape how NodeZero identifies, exploits, and validates vulnerabilities across complex environments, and guide offensive capabilities from research and proof of concept through scalable production delivery. You’ll partner closely with Product and leaders across Engineering, including Precision Defense and Platform, to align the Proactive Offense portfolio with customer needs and company priorities. This is a highly visible leadership role central to Horizon3 http://Horizon3.ai’s mission of delivering continuous, autonomous security testing at scale. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES ORGANIZATION LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY - Lead and scale the Proactive Offense engineering organization across teams responsible for offensive capabilities, exploit development, and attack automation within NodeZero. - Translate the organization’s charter into a clear technical strategy, operating model, and sequenced roadmap, balancing customer value, product priorities, and durable engineering foundations. - Build an effective leadership structure as the organization grows; hire, coach, and develop managers, technical leaders, and senior individual contributors with clear ownership and accountability. - Establish goals and operating mechanisms that make progress, quality, capacity, dependencies, and risks visible across teams. - Partner with technical leaders on architecture and design, bringing sufficient depth to evaluate tradeoffs, challenge assumptions, and ensure systems can evolve as the product and portfolio expand. PRODUCT & PORTFOLIO EXECUTION - Partner with Product, Precision Defense, Platform, and customer-facing teams to prioritize work across offensive research, vulnerability exploitation, attack content, and automation. - Shape a coherent portfolio roadmap and translate ambiguous opportunities into focused plans with explicit scope, measurable outcomes, and well-managed cross-team dependencies. - Drive capabilities from proof of concept to production, ensuring research and innovation become reliable, scalable, supportable product features. - Ensure engineering investment advances customer outcomes while balancing technical quality, speed to market, operational needs, and responsible product behavior. - Surface tradeoffs early, communicate decisions clearly, and protect teams from competing priorities that would undermine delivery or quality. DELIVERY & OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE - Improve execution across multiple teams by establishing clear planning, decision-making, and delivery practices that support predictable progress without unnecessary process. - Hold the organization accountable for product quality, reliability, and maintainability throughout design, development, release, and ongoing operation. - Identify organizational and technical risks early, align owners on mitigation, and communicate material changes in scope, timing, or outcomes to stakeholders. - Use customer feedback, product performance, and engineering signals to evaluate results and continuously improve how the organization delivers. TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP & COLLABORATION - Maintain enough technical depth to guide consequential decisions and help leaders resolve complex architectural or delivery challenges without becoming the day-to-day decision bottleneck. - Mentor technical leaders in building modular, resilient systems that translate offensive tradecraft into scalable NodeZero capabilities. - Collaborate across Engineering, Product, and go-to-market teams to align offensive innovation with business priorities and the broader customer experience. - Foster a culture of collaboration, creativity, learning, and engineering excellence across disciplines and teams. WHAT YOU’LL BRING - Significant experience leading and scaling software engineering organizations delivering SaaS or cybersecurity products, including leading through managers and senior technical leaders. - A track record of setting engineering strategy and delivering across multiple teams or product areas in a fast-moving environment. - Strong technical judgment in software architecture and offensive security domains such as exploit development, vulnerability research, attack automation, or red teaming. - Demonstrated success taking complex technical capabilities from concept through production launch and continued operation at scale. - Experience with distributed systems, cloud software, automation, and large-scale SaaS platforms, with the ability to guide architecture and design decisions. - A product-oriented mindset and sound judgment balancing technical excellence, customer impact, speed to market, and operational considerations. - Experience hiring, coaching, and developing high-performing teams and leaders, and establishing clear accountability across an organization. - Strong cross-functional partnership skills, including alignment with Product and stakeholders across Engineering and go-to-market teams. - Excellent analytical, written, verbal, and storytelling skills; able to translate complex engineering concepts into clear direction and decisions. - A high degree of initiative, ownership, and accountability. - Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. TECHNICAL & DOMAIN EXPERIENCE - Deep familiarity with offensive security techniques and practices, including vulnerability research, exploit development, attack automation, or red-team operations, and the ability to translate them into scalable product capabilities. - Proficiency in at least one modern programming language such as Python, Go, C++, or C#, with experience building or guiding the development of large-scale software systems. - Strong understanding of platform design, system architecture, and automation pipelines, including CI/CD, containerization, infrastructure as code, and observability practices. - Experience with cloud infrastructure and services such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, and with production SaaS or security platforms. - Familiarity with network protocols, multiple operating systems (including Windows and Linux), and common enterprise technologies. - Working knowledge of databases such as PostgreSQL, Neo4j, or similar, and data-flow design. - Awareness of cybersecurity industry standards and trends, with the ability to connect technical direction to customer and product needs. BONUS QUALIFICATIONS - Offensive security certifications such as OSCP, OSEP, OSED, or GPEN. - Experience mentoring teams on offensive tradecraft or developing proprietary offensive tooling. - Experience scaling an engineering organization through significant hiring, organizational change, or product growth. - Experience building B2B SaaS or security products in a startup or growth-stage company. TRAVEL REQUIRED We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 10% travel to be successful.   Perks of Horizon3 - Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive. - Growth Opportunities: Be part of a dynamic and growing team with numerous career development opportunities. - Innovative Culture: Work in a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. - Hybrid & Remote Work: We embrace a mix of remote and hybrid work models depending on role and location, including our Chicago office, where some roles require regular in-office presence. - Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive salary, equity and benefits. Our benefits include health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave. Compensation and Values At Horizon3, we believe that our people are our greatest asset, and our compensation philosophy reflects this core value. We are committed to fostering an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and rewarded for their contributions. Our compensation structure is designed to be fair, competitive, and transparent, ensuring that every team member is recognized and compensated equitably across roles, levels, and locations. In accordance with various State’s transparency regulations, we provide the following salary range information for this position: - Base salary range: $315,000 - $370,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills. - Additional compensation: All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options. You Belong Here Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, or any other legally protected status by law. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion means we strive to attract, develop, and retain a workforce that reflects the varied communities we serve. We believe that diverse perspectives drive innovation and strengthen our ability to create cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. At Horizon3, every team member is valued and supported in an environment that encourages personal and professional growth. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, and we encourage all qualified individuals to apply. Come be a part of Horizon3, where your unique contributions are recognized, and your potential is limitless. Other Duties Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.  Application Note In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.