Director Software Engineering - AppSec Platform

Harness; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,600,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Harness, the AI Software Delivery Platform, is seeking a Director of Engineering for WAAP to own the technical vision, roadmap, and execution for live traffic protection for global customers. You will split time between technology leadership, product ownership, and cross-functional collaboration with AST and Software Supply Chain Security.

You'll lead the AI-era protection efforts from discovery to enforcement, build and scale the team, and engage enterprise customers on roadmap input and

Responsibilities

• Define the AI-era WAAP vision - set strategy for runtime API protection, bot and abuse defense, and AI security as machine traffic and agentic workloads reshape what "web application protection" means.
• Shape the AI Security roadmap - identify where WAAP should invest next in AI Discovery (finding and inventorying AI/agent usage across an enterprise), AI red-teaming (proactively probing models and agents for weaknesses), and the AI firewall (governing and enforcing how models and agents are allowed to act).
• Own architecture and platform depth - provide hands-on technical leadership across API discovery, runtime traffic analysis, and detection efficacy, moving toward a unified architecture across the broader AST/WAAP stack.
• Build and develop the team - hire, grow, and retain engineers and leaders, building on managers and senior ICs already in place across the org.
• Partner directly with customers - engage with enterprise customers on escalations, roadmap input, and adoption of new AI-era protection capabilities.
• Drive quality and enterprise readiness - own reliability, incident response, and production health across WAAP, closing execution gaps with rigor and discipline.
• Contribute to the AppSec portfolio strategy - collaborate across AST and Software Supply Chain Security to ensure WAAP's roadmap reinforces a coherent security platform.
• Represent Harness externally - engage with the security community, industry panels, and customers as a credible voice on API security and AI-era application defense

Job description

Harness is the AI Software Delivery Platform company, led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7B). Harness has raised approximately $570M in funding and is valued at $5.5B, backed by leading investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures, Citi Ventures, and more. As AI accelerates code creation, the real bottleneck has shifted to everything after the code - testing, deployments, application security, reliability, compliance, and cost optimization. Harness brings AI and automation to this "outer loop," helping teams ship software faster while maintaining security and governance throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle.

Powered by Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the Harness Platform applies deep context and intelligent automation across the software delivery lifecycle with governance and policy-driven controls embedded throughout the platform.

Over the past year, Harness powered over 185M deployments, 82M builds, 18T flag evaluations, 8M security scans, 9.1B optimized tests, 3T protected API calls, and helped manage $2.8B in cloud spend - enabling customers like United Airlines, Morningstar, and Choice Hotels to accelerate releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by up to 60%, and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency.

With a global team across 26 offices and 27 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI software delivery - and we're looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster.

Position Summary

Join Harness at a defining moment for application security - the moment AI stopped being a feature of the attack surface and became the attack surface itself. Harness is the leading AI-native software delivery platform, helping engineering teams build, test, secure, and deploy software faster and more safely. We're backed by $600M+ in funding, led by AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal, and recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for DevSecOps Platforms.

About The Role

As Director of Engineering for WAAP, you'll own the technical vision, roadmap, and execution for a product line defending live, high-value traffic for global customers - and help point the team toward where AI-era protection needs to go next, from AI/agent discovery to red-teaming to enforcement at the AI firewall layer. You'll split your time between technology leadership, product and roadmap ownership, and cross-functional collaboration - partnering closely with the AST and Software Supply Chain teams that make up Harness's broader AppSec portfolio.

Key Responsibilities

• Define the AI-era WAAP vision - set strategy for runtime API protection, bot and abuse defense, and AI security as machine traffic and agentic workloads reshape what "web application protection" means.
• Shape the AI Security roadmap - identify where WAAP should invest next in AI Discovery (finding and inventorying AI/agent usage across an enterprise), AI red-teaming (proactively probing models and agents for weaknesses), and the AI firewall (governing and enforcing how models and agents are allowed to act) - a fast-moving space with significant room to define what good looks like.
• Own architecture and platform depth - provide hands-on technical leadership across API discovery, runtime traffic analysis, and detection efficacy, continuing the move toward a unified, efficient architecture across the broader AST/WAAP stack.
• Build and develop the team - hire, grow, and retain strong engineers and leaders, building on managers and senior ICs already in place across the org.
• Partner directly with customers - engage with enterprise customers on escalations, roadmap input, and adoption of new AI-era protection capabilities.
• Drive quality and enterprise readiness - own reliability, incident response, and production health across WAAP, closing execution gaps with rigor and discipline.
• Contribute to the AppSec portfolio strategy - collaborate across AST and Software Supply Chain Security to ensure WAAP's roadmap reinforces a coherent, best-in-class security platform.
• Represent Harness externally - engage with the security community, industry panels, and customers as a credible voice on API security and AI-era application defense