Engineering Manager, Firewall Defense

Horizon3; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 225,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid & remote work

Health, vision & dental insurance

Equity

Flexible vacation policy

Parental leave

Job summary

Horizon3 is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our Web Application Firewall validation and tuning team. You will own hiring, growth, and how the team works as it scales, partnering with a Staff-level Technical Lead and Product on sequencing of roadmaps.

This role requires deep WAF/domain security knowledge, SaaS leadership experience, and strong stakeholder management to deliver secure, scalable defense capabilities in production environments.

Qualifications

• Familiarity with WAF or application security to partner with domain experts.
• Proven experience leading highly technical backend or platform engineering teams in SaaS/cybersecurity environments.
• Track record delivering products under fixed dates with ambiguous requirements.
• Strong dependency and stakeholder management, with written risk reporting.
• Understanding of security and reliability in multi-tenant SaaS.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a backend/defensive engineering team with clear career paths.
• Translate firewall workflows into buildable requirements and product capabilities.
• Partner with a Staff-level Technical Lead on architecture and with Product on roadmap sequencing.
• Translate goals into sequenced deliverables and actively manage scope.
• Stay technically engaged to challenge assumptions and unblock the team.

Skills

WAF security expertise

Backend engineering leadership

SaaS/cloud-scale experience

Staff-level collaboration

Security operations background

Stakeholder management

Scope management

Incident response discipline

Tools

AWS WAF

Cloudflare

F5

Imperva

Akamai

FortiWeb

Job description

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 NodeZero 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 Web Application 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 WAF or application 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 escape scope tradeoffs rather than absorb them.
• PreferredWorking familiarity with WAF platforms (i.e. AWS WAF, Cloudflare, F5, Imperva, Akamai, or FortiWeb) 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 Horizon3Inclusive 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

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