Lead Security Engineer

CNTXT, Inc.; United Arab Emirates; Hybrid; AED 420,000 - 780,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation to UAE

Job summary

CNTXT, Inc. is seeking the first dedicated security hire to own all cybersecurity disciplines from application security to cloud infrastructure in a fast-growing AI-driven platform. You will shape policy, implement controls, and drive security across the stack while enabling shipping with pragmatic governance.

You will build and lead a security program, champion a culture of secure engineering, and collaborate with executives as CNTXT scales in the UAE and beyond.

Qualifications

• 7–10+ years in security engineering with leadership experience.
• Hands-on, first security hire with ownership across org.
• Deep cloud security, app security, IAM and incident response.
• Cloud providers: multi-cloud experience (GCP/AWS/AZURE).
• Familiarity with Terraform, Kubernetes, and security tooling.

Responsibilities

• Define CNTXT's security roadmap, policies and risk register.
• Secure SDLC, perform threat modeling, and code reviews.
• Harden cloud, IAM, network, and container security.
• Lead vulnerability management, VA/PT, and red-team engagements.
• Build incident response, logging, and monitoring playbooks.
• Oversee data and AI security, model/prompt risk controls.

Skills

Security engineering

Lead/ownership

Cloud security

Application security

IAM

Offensive security

Incident response

Terraform

DDoS mitigation

Scripting (Python)

Education

Bachelor's or above (security related)

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

SIEM

EDR

WAF

CI/CD

SAST/DAST

Job description

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role: you will be the first dedicated security hire and the single point of accountability for cybersecurity across CNTXT from application and cloud infrastructure… Reports to: CTO / VP Engineering

About CNTXT

CNTXT is a high-growth technology scale-up building at the intersection of engineering, AI, and data. As our platforms, customer base, and cloud footprint expand, security becomes a first-class engineering discipline foundational to everything we ship.

About the Role

This is a hands‑on, high‑ownership role: you will be the first dedicated security hire and the single point of accountability for cybersecurity across CNTXT from application and cloud infrastructure security to endpoint protection, identity and access. You will define the security strategy, then roll up your sleeves and implement it: writing policies and Terraform in the same week, running a pentest one day and briefing leadership the next. As CNTXT grows, you will have the opportunity to build and lead a security team around the foundations you put in place.

What You'll Own

Security Strategy & Governance

• Define and drive CNTXT's overall security roadmap, risk register, and security policies aligned to business and product priorities
• Establish a pragmatic, engineering-friendly security culture security that enables shipping, not blocks it

Application & Code Security

• Secure the SDLC end to end: threat modeling, secure code review practices, dependency and supply‑chain scanning (SCA), SAST/DAST in CI/CD
• Protect the codebase and developer environments against compromise — repository access controls, branch protection, signed commits, secrets scanning

Cloud & Infrastructure Security

• Harden cloud environments (GCP / AWS / Azure): network segmentation, workload identity, security groups, WAF, and infrastructure‑as‑code guardrails
• Implement DDoS protectionand edge security (CDN/WAF, rate limiting, traffic anomaly detection)
• Own container and Kubernetes security, image scanning, and runtime protection
• Establish logging, monitoring, and alerting (SIEM/SOAR) with actionable detection rules

Identity, Access & Secrets Management

• Design and enforce IAM across cloud, SaaS, and internal systems — SSO, MFA, least privilege, role based access, and periodic access reviews
• Implement secrets and key management (e.g., Vault, cloud KMS): rotation, encryption at rest and in transit, and elimination of hard‑coded credentials

Endpoint & Corporate Security

• Deploy and manage endpoint protection (EDR/XDR), device management (MDM), and disk encryption across employee devices

Vulnerability Management & Offensive Testing

• Own the vulnerability management lifecycle: continuous scanning, prioritization, remediation SLAs
• Plan and conduct VA/PT( vulnerability assessments and penetration tests) internally, and manage external pentest and red‑team engagements

Incident Response & Resilience

• Build and own the incident response plan: detection, triage, containment, forensics, and post incident reviews
• Establish backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity practices for critical systems

Data & AI Security

• Secure data pipelines, data stores, and ML/AI workloads — data classification, encryption, access controls, and privacy‑by‑design
• Assess and mitigate AI‑specific risks: model and prompt injection, training‑data leakage, third party AI/API exposure

What We’re Looking For

Must-have

• 7–10+ years in security engineering, with at least 2–3 years in a lead or ownership role — ideally as an early/first security hire at a startup or scale‑up
• Deep hands‑on experience across at least three of: cloud security, application security, IAM, offensive security (VA/PT), incident response
• Strong cloud security expertise on GCP, AWS, or Azure (multi‑cloud a plus), including Kubernetes and infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform)
• Practical experience implementing DDoS mitigation, WAF, SIEM, EDR, and secrets management tooling
• Proficiency in scripting/automation (Python, Go, or Bash) — you automate before you administer
• Ability to communicate risk clearly to both engineers and executives, in a fast‑moving environment with limited resources

Nice-to-have

• Certifications such as OSCP, CISSP, CCSP, CISM, or cloud security specialty certs

Why This Role

• Greenfield ownership— you define security at CNTXT from the ground up, with executive backing
• Breadth and impact— your decisions shape the security of AI and data products used at scale
• Growth path— clear trajectory to Head of Security / CISO as the team grows around you
• Competitive compensation, relocation support to the UAE, and the chance to build in one of the region’s fastest‑growing tech ecosystems