Head of Security

Tremendous; United States; Remote; USD 250,000 - 330,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work

Equity

Job summary

Tremendous is the global platform for sending payouts—gift cards and money—worldwide. As the first Head of Security, you will own the security posture end-to-end, integrate with engineering, and drive a cultural shift toward proactive security.

This is a player-coach role with hands-on start and potential to build a team as Tremendous scales. Reporting to the VP of Engineering, you’ll lead security across access/identity, SecOps, monitoring, incident response, and vendor security, while shaping

Qualifications

• Hands-on security experience at a scaling company (early security hire) is required.
• Deep expertise in at least one core security domain (product/production security, security operations, or access/identity) is essential.
• Engineer mindset: read code and understand infrastructure (RoR, TS+React, PostgreSQL, GCP).
• Judgment over checklists: explain risk and make pragmatic trade-offs for business needs.

Responsibilities

• Own Tremendous’ security posture end-to-end with engineering on production infrastructure and code security.
• Assess gaps, prioritize and implement highest-leverage security improvements.
• Treat incident response as core and ensure breaches are small and contained.
• Drive security as a cultural shift, introducing controls incrementally and collaborating with teams.
• Lead AI-security posture and manage tooling risk while enabling use of AI.
• Define staffing needs for the security function and hire the team.

Skills

Hands-on security

Core security domain

Engineering mindset

Risk-based decisions

Stakeholder communication

Team building

Fintech 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.