Engineering Manager, Firewall Defense

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 We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Firewall validation, effectiveness, and tuning team. NodeZero proves which attacks work in a customer's production environment. This team closes the loop — turning what we learn from offense into defensive action. You will lead a team of diverse skill sets as they work at different cadences and measure progress differently. Building an environment where those differences compound rather than collide is a central part of the job. You will own hiring, growth, and how the team works together as it scales. You will partner closely with a Staff-level Technical Lead who owns architecture, with Product on sequencing, and with Engineering leaders across the organization. This is a highly technical leadership role for someone who has moved beyond hands-on coding but still has the depth to evaluate a design, challenge an estimate, and know when a team is stuck. In this role, you will: - Lead, mentor, and grow a team of backend engineers and security practitioners with deep firewall and defensive expertise, with clear career paths for each. - Help the team turn firewall workflows into buildable requirements and usable product capabilities. - Partner with a Staff-level Technical Lead who owns architecture, and with Product on roadmap and sequencing. - Translate ambiguous goals into sequenced, deliverable work, and manage scope actively rather than absorbing it. - Stay technically engaged enough to challenge assumptions and unblock the team, while creating outcomes through engineers rather than serving as the primary implementer. - Establish the operational discipline this work requires: design review, release practices, on-call, and incident response. WHAT YOU'LL BRING - Familiarity with firewall or network security sufficient to partner effectively with domain experts. - Proven experience leading highly technical backend or platform engineering teams — ideally within a SaaS, cybersecurity, or cloud-scale environment. - Track record delivering products under a fixed date, where requirements were ambiguous and scope had to be actively managed rather than assumed. - Strong dependency and stakeholder management across many engineering teams, with a habit of surfacing risks and tradeoffs early and in writing. - Understanding of security and reliability best practices in multi-tenant SaaS. - Experience partnering with a staff-level technical lead, with a clear sense of where management ends and technical ownership begins. - Ability to hold a quality or safety bar under schedule pressure, and to escalate scope tradeoffs rather than absorb them. Preferred - Working familiarity with enterprise firewall platforms (i.e Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Cisco, or Check Point) and the ability to engage domain experts and evaluate security, delivery, and operational tradeoffs; hands-on platform or integration experience is a plus. - Familiarity with agentic or LLM-backed systems in production, and a realistic view of how they fail. - Background in security operations, detection engineering, or offensive security. - Experience leading a platform team whose customers were other internal engineering teams. - Exposure to event-driven architectures or streaming platforms (Kafka, Pulsar, Kinesis, Flink, or similar).   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: $225,000 - $265,000 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.