Horizon3.ai is hiring a Senior Engineering Manager, Precision Defense

Horizon3.ai seeks a Senior Engineering Manager to lead our Precision Defense engineering teams. You will own the teams responsible for turning NodeZero's offensive insights into autonomous, high-signal defenses across tripwires, rapid response, and security control validation. This is a manager-of-managers role with significant product ownership, scaling the engineering teams behind these critical capabilities.

What You'll Do

• Own and scale the engineering teams behind NodeZero's Precision Defense capabilities.
• Build and lead an organization that closes the loop between offense and defense.
• Lead teams building and evolving honeypots, honeytokens, and other deception capabilities (Tripwires).
• Lead teams codifying emerging zero-day and n-day threats into tests and content for proactive alerts (Rapid Response).
• Lead teams validating and improving endpoint detection and response (EDR), identity security, and data protection controls.
• Lead teams integrating with SIEM/EDR/ITSM and other detection/control surfaces.
• Help define direction, shape roadmaps, and set technical priorities in an environment with limited dedicated PM capacity.
• Manage concurrent initiatives and balance short-term delivery with longer-term platform and product investments.

What We're Looking For

• Proven experience leading multiple backend/platform or detection/defense teams, or an engineering org, in a SaaS, cybersecurity, or cloud-scale environment.
• Track record of taking products from concept to market in partnership with Product and GTM.
• Highly technical background with expertise in software development and B2B SaaS multi-product platforms.
• Deep understanding of scalable backend architecture, data modeling, databases, and distributed systems.
• Experience with data pipelines and ETL systems, including performance, reliability, and observability considerations.
• Strong grasp of cloud infrastructure concepts (AWS, GCP, or Azure), DevOps, and resilience engineering.
• Familiarity with modern detection and response concepts, including EDR, SIEM, threat detection rules, and detection engineering best practices.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and experience working cross-functionally with designers, developers, product managers, customer teams, and GTM.
• Strong documentation habits and a bias toward clarity, transparency, and alignment.
• Creative, self-motivated, highly energetic, detail- and results-oriented individual with a learn-it-all attitude.
• Curiosity about both offensive and defensive security domains.
• Strong ability to identify procedural and architectural gaps, implement best practices, and empower teams to ship high-quality features at high velocity.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Extensive experience in technical leadership and architectural decision-making for complex systems.
• Strong background in backend and/or platform engineering, with deep experience designing, scaling, and maintaining distributed systems.
• Expertise in at least one modern programming language (Python strongly preferred; Go, Java, C++, or similar also relevant).
• Familiarity with ETL pipelines, data flow orchestration, and database performance optimization (e.g., PostgreSQL, Neo4j, or equivalent).
• Experience working with analytics- or graph-heavy workloads.
• Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure and services (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including networking, compute, and storage fundamentals.
• Exposure to infrastructure-as-code and deployment concepts (e.g., Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD tooling).
• Experience with observability and monitoring stacks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry).
• Understanding of security and reliability best practices in a multi-tenant SaaS or cybersecurity environment.
• Knowledge of Linux-based systems (e.g., Ubuntu, Kali) and modern development practices for distributed services.

Nice to Have

• Experience or strong interest in offense-informed defense approaches that combine exploitability, attacker behavior, and high-fidelity detections.
• Exposure to cybersecurity industry standards, trends, and common attacker and defender techniques.

Technical Stack

• Languages: Python, Go, Java, C++
• Databases: PostgreSQL, Neo4j
• Cloud Platforms: AWS, GCP, Azure
• Infrastructure & Tools: Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD tooling
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry
• Operating Systems: Linux (Ubuntu, Kali)

Team & Environment

This is a manager-of-managers role leading Precision Defense engineering teams.

Benefits & Compensation

• Compensation: $210,000-$260,000 annually + equity
• Equity package (stock options)
• Health, vision & dental care for you and your family
• Flexible vacation policy
• Generous parental leave

Work Mode

This position is open to candidates globally.

Horizon3.ai is dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success.