Head of Security

Tremendous; Germany; Remote; EUR 223,000 - 295,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote

AI tools budget ($5k/mo)

Competitive pay and equity

Job summary

Tremendous is seeking its first Head of Security to own the company’s security posture end-to-end, collaborating closely with engineering. This player-coach role starts hands-on and scales to building a small team as the company grows.

You’ll lead access/identity, SecOps, monitoring, incident response, and policy, while shaping how Tremendous secures AI tooling and production systems. This is a fully remote, high-autonomy position.

Qualifications

• Hands-on security experience at a high-growth company.
• Deep domain expertise in at least one core area (prod security, SecOps, or access/policy).
• Engineer’s mindset; read code and understand infrastructure (RoR, TS+React, PostgreSQL, GCP).
• Ability to drive risk-based decisions and communicate trade-offs across teams.
• Experience building or co-building a small security team is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own Tremendous's security posture end-to-end with the engineering team.
• Assess gaps, prioritize, and implement high-impact security fixes.
• Treat incident response as core; keep breaches small and contained.
• Drive security culture across the company with collaboration, not gatekeeping.
• Lead the AI-security posture and manage tooling-related risk.
• Define staffing plans and grow the security team as needed.

Skills

Security leadership

Production security

Identity & access management

Incident response

Policy enforcement

Team building

AI security experience

Job description

Tremendous is the global platform built for businesses to send payouts—gift cards and money—to anyone, anywhere, instantly. We're trusted by 20,000+ organizations, from startups to giants like Atlassian, MIT, and United Way, to reach millions of recipients worldwide.

We're profitable and growing without outside investors. We're fully remote, with a high-documentation, low-meeting culture that leaves more time for the work that matters—and for your life outside it. Our employee NPS sits in the high 80s.

We move billions of dollars through our systems. That makes security existential, and it's why we're making our first dedicated security hire.

About the role

You'll be our first Head of Security. There's already a real foundation here—bug bounty, pen tests, automated code and configuration scanning on the production and code side, phishing simulations on the people side. You’ll add to it across access and identity, SecOps and monitoring, incident response, vendor security, employee security practices, and policy. You'll own the whole posture.

This is a player-coach role. Early on, you'll do the scoping and the hands-on work yourself; this is not a role where you direct from above. As the work demands it, we're fully prepared to build a team here—and we're looking to you to define what that team should be and when.

You'll report to the VP of Engineering, Tremendous' most senior technical leader. We've deliberately placed security with Engineering so you're set up to drive real implementation fast—embedded with the people whose work you're securing, not siloed in a compliance function. As the security function matures, we'll revisit this.

What you'll do

Own Tremendous' security posture end-to-end, partnering with our engineering team on production infrastructure and code security.

Assess where we have gaps, prioritize them, and tackle our highest-leverage gaps first. We’ll have opinions, but you own the prioritization and implementation.

Treat incident response as core, not afterthought. We may not be able to prevent a breach, but your job is making sure it's small, contained, and that we know exactly what to do.

Drive security as a cultural shift across the company—introducing controls incrementally, working with teams rather than over them. "Yes, and," not "no."

Lead our AI-security posture. We invest heavily in AI tooling; your job is to manage that risk and enable it, not to ban it.

Define when and how to staff up the security function, and hire your own team.

What you'll bring

Real, hands-on security experience at a company that scaled—ideally as an early security hire who grew with the business through high growth.

Deep experience in at least one core security domain—product/production security, security operations, or access/identity and policy—with enough range to reason across the others. You defined the security posture, not just executed someone else’s playbook.

An engineer's mindset. You reach for code to solve problems and can read our codebase and understand our infrastructure (Ruby on Rails; TypeScript + React; PostgreSQL; Google Cloud). You won't write much day-to-day, but you're not lost in the code.

Judgment over checklists. You can explain the actual risk of a given decision, hold a firm line where it matters, and give ground where "best practice" doesn't apply to us or real business need pulls the other way. You can hold your own in a debate about whether to open up broad data access for AI tooling.

Bedside manner. You drive hard change by bringing the team around to your point of view, rather than just telling them no. Engineers and the rest of the company want to work with you.

Experience building or co-building a small security team is a plus.

Fintech, payments, or regulated-industry experience is a plus.

What's cool about the role

You define the function. First security leader, with the budget for the required tools and team.

A real mandate. The push for this hire comes straight from the founders.

We invest in your tools. Everyone has a $5k/month budget for AI tools. Use it.

Competitive pay and equity. Base salary $250,000–$330,000, plus meaningful equity.

Fully remote. Work from anywhere in the Americas.

Great culture. Read more about how we work in our public handbook.

About Tremendous

Tremendous is a global platform that enables businesses to send thousands of payouts to anyone, anywhere, for free.

The company specializes in delivering gift cards and money to millions of recipients worldwide, serving 20,000 organizations including Atlassian, MIT, and United Way. Their customers—researchers, marketers, HR teams, nonprofits, and platform businesses—use Tremendous for its speed and ease of use.

The company is profitable and growing without outside investors, operating as a fully remote, high-documentation, low-meeting culture with strong employee satisfaction metrics (employee NPS in the high 80s).