Head of Security Research

Dropzone AI; United States; Remote; USD 220,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401K with employer match

Self-Managed PTO

Parental leave

Job summary

Dropzone AI is hiring a Head of Security Research to lead a team of expert engineers and practitioners reimagining threat intelligence, hunting, detection engineering, and alert investigation in the GenAI era.

This player/coach role blends hands-on work with building an elite security engineering and research team, reporting to the founder/CEO and partnering with product and engineering to ensure top-quality agent-based security.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in detection and response with security engineering, threat hunting, SOC, or incident response.
• 3+ years managing a team of security engineers, threat hunters, SOC analysts, etc.
• Background in building and running SOC functions, detection programs, or security research teams.
• Proven experience leading high-performing technical teams while staying hands-on.
• Able to mentor across multiple domains (detections, intel, IR) without being siloed.
• Opinionated about what world-class looks like in threat intelligence, hunting, detection engineering, SOC, and IR.
• Able to collaborate closely with engineering and product teams.
• Early-stage startup mindset. You thrive on ambiguity and move with lightspeed execution.

Responsibilities

• Lead & Build a High-Impact Security Engineering and Research Team, including detection and response.
• Act as a player/coach, setting strategic research directions while contributing technically.
• Establish a culture of high-quality research, rapid iteration, and operator-first thinking.
• Drive Product Effectiveness by building measurement and evaluation frameworks for agent outputs.
• Own the encoding of expert intuitions into the agentic system and collaborate with engineering.
• Continuously improve the efficacy of agents in real-world deployments.
• Reimagine detection and response with agents by prototyping new ideas for autonomous defense.
• ShapeDropzone’s product roadmap with field experience and real-world operations.

Skills

Security engineering

Threat hunting

SOC

Incident response

Team management

Mentoring

Product/engineering collaboration

Startup mindset

Tools

Claude Code

OpenClaw

Job description

About Dropzone AI

Dropzone’s mission is to scale cybersecurity beyond human limits, and augment every single human security engineer/analyst with an army of AI security specialists. Humans alone cannot sufficiently protect our digital future, andAIaugmentation is the only way for defenders to reclaim the high ground. We are an award winning company disrupting the $200B+ cybersecurity market.

Powered by GenAIadvancements, our technology offloads repetitive day-to-day work and frees human analysts to focus on real threats and higher-value projects. We are venture-backed, and our team has a rare blend of deep experience across cybersecurity,AI/ML, and SaaS product development. Join us if you want to be on the ground floor of using GenAIto transform cyber defense. Learn more at www.dropzone.ai.

About the role

We’re hiring a Head of Security Research to lead a team of expert security engineers and practitioners to reimagine key cyber defense functions like threat intelligence, hunting, detection engineering, and alert investigation in the Agentic AI era.

This is a player/coach management role for someone who still loves being hands-on, writing detections, responding to latest CVEs, reviewing noisy alerts, and hunting attackers, but also knows how to build an elite security engineering and research team and set a high technical bar.

You’ll be directly reporting to the founder/CEO and collaborating closely with the rest of product and engineering teams to ensure Dropzone SOC agents are as good as expert human practitioners.

What You’ll Do

Lead & Build a High-Impact Security Engineering and Research Team

• Build a team of elite security engineers and world-class domain experts across Detection and Response, including alert investigation, threat hunting, detection engineering, and threat intelligence
• Act as a player/coach, setting strategic research and engineering directions while staying deeply involved in technical work
• Establish a culture of high-quality research, rapid iteration, and operator-first thinking

What Your Team’ll Do:

Drive Product Effectiveness

• Build and refine measurement and evaluation frameworks to ensure the analysis our agents produced is high quality and mirrors expert human outputs
• Owns the process of encoding expert human intuitions and techniques into our agentic system
• Work closely with rest of engineering to continuously improve the efficacy of our agents in real world deployments

Reimagine Detection and Response with agents

• Prototype and test new ideas where unlimited analytical capacity can fundamentally change cyber defense
• Serve as a key voice in shaping Dropzone’s product roadmap based on real-world operation experience
• Pressure-test assumptions about how AI should be applied in security operations
• Help define what "autonomous defense system" actually looks like in practice and be an industry thought leader around it

Requirements

• 8+ years in detection and response with strong experience in security engineering, threat hunting, SOC, or incident response
• 3+ years experience managing a team of security engineers, threat hunters, SOC analysts, etc
• Background in building and running SOC functions, detection programs, or security research teams
• Proven experience leading high-performing technical teams while staying hands-on
• Able to mentor across multiple domains (detections, intel, IR) without being siloed
• Opinionated about what world-class looks like in threat intelligence, hunting, detection engineering, SOC, and IR
• Able to collaborate closely with engineering and product teams
• Early-stage startup mindset. You thrive on ambiguity and move with lightspeed execution

Nice to Have

• Background in building commercial products or security services
• Familiar with AI agents like Claude Code and OpenClaw
• Experience publishing security research or contributing to the broader security community
• Experience working with product marketing and field teams to evangelize new security technology
• Founder or early-stage (first 10 engineers) or experience in standing up a new technology bet within a more established company

Work Environment/Travel

We are a 100% remote company where you will work from your home with company-provided equipment to set you up for success. Semi-frequent travel to professional office settings and other events locally and nationally; some overnight travel expected.

Compensation

In the spirit of pay transparency, we are excited to share the base salary range below, exclusive of fringe benefits or potential bonuses. If you are hired at Dropzone your final base salary compensation will be determined based on factors such as geographic location, skills, education, and/or experience. In addition, all compensation packages include significant above market new hire equity grants because we believe in rewarding long term value creation. If you are hired at Dropzone your final base salary compensation will be determined based on factors such as geographic location, skills, education, and/or experience. In addition to those factors, we believe in the importance of pay equity and consider internal equity of our current team members as a part of any final offer. Please keep in mind that hiring at the maximum of the range would not be typical to allow for future and continued salary growth. We also offer a generous benefits package, including company paid health insurance, 401K Plan with employer match, Self-Managed PTO, parental leave, and more.

The pay range for this role is:

$220,000—$255,000 USD