Senior Engineering Manager, Rapid Response

NightDragon Acquisition Corp.; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

NightDragon Acquisition Corp. seeks an experienced Senior Engineering Manager to lead our Rapid Response Attack Engineering team.

This role blends vulnerability research, AI-driven automation, and product delivery at speed, with a focus on secure, production-ready software. You will establish operational excellence for triage and execution, mentor a diverse team, and partner with Product Management to turn offensive research into a high-quality Roadmap-driven product that keeps customers ahead

Qualifications

• 2–3+ years of direct people management experience leading software engineers.
• 3+ years of software development experience.
• Experience hiring and interviewing engineers.
• Proven ability to balance hands-on technical depth with strategic leadership.
• Strong technical writing and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead a diverse team of Attack Engineers focused on vulnerability research and AI-driven engineering.
• Set direction and quality standards for AI automation pipelines and rapid response product.
• Drive hiring and scale the Rapid Response team.
• Collaborate with Product Management and field teams to deliver the Rapid Response product.

Skills

People management

Software development

Hiring engineers

Cross-functional collaboration

Technical writing

Tools

Git

Python

Docker

Kubernetes

PostgreSQL

Neo4j

Job description

Summary

We are seeking an experienced Senior Engineering Manager to lead our Rapid Response Attack Engineering team. Rapid Response is Horizon3’s proactive capability that allows customers to keep ahead of emerging, exploitable vulnerabilities before adversaries can exploit them in the wild. You will lead a high-performing team of Attack Engineers operating at the intersection of breaking vulnerability research, AI-driven automation, and product delivery.

In this role, you will establish operational excellence across daily triage and execution while balancing rapid delivery with production-safe quality. You will bring a deep understanding of vulnerability analysis, lead a team building out cutting-edge AI harnesses to accelerate vulnerability research and exploit pipelines, and partner closely with Product Management to turn offensive research into a high-quality product.

Ideal candidates bring a strong mix of technical depth in vulnerability analysis, leadership experience, and a software engineering mindset. You should be excited to mentor a diverse team and build foundational AI-native technologies that shape the future of autonomous offensive security.

What You’ll Do

Leadership & Team Development

• Lead a diverse team of Attack Engineers specializing in vulnerability research and agentic software engineering across multiple seniority levels (from junior engineers to Principal Attack Engineers), ensuring appropriate career development, mentorship, and growth paths for each.

• Set technical direction, priorities, and quality standards for AI-native automation pipelines, vulnerability research and the Rapid Response product

• Drive hiring and organizational scaling as the Rapid Response team expands.

• Foster a culture of continuous learning, raising the bar for offensive rigor, delivery quality, and secure software development practices.

Rapid Response Strategy & Execution (Hack, Fix, Verify, Repeat)

• Lead daily triage, prioritization, and cross-functional coordination for breaking CVEs and zero-days. Establish high-velocity operational cadences that allow the team to analyze, reproduce, and weaponize emerging threats within hours of public disclosure.

• Drive the vision and engineering for AI-driven harnesses, LLM workflows, and automated pipelines to accelerate vulnerability discovery, patch diffing, and proof-of-concept exploit development.

• Partner seamlessly with Product Management and field teams. Serve as the bridge between technical vulnerability research and product strategy, ensuring a high quality Rapid Response product, delivered continuously at market-leading speed.

• Lead the analysis of real-world attack data, telemetry, and threat trends to prioritize high-value research targets and measure the real-world impact of attack coverage.

What You’ll Bring

Leadership

• 2-3+ years of direct people management experience leading software engineers

• 3+ years of software development experience

• Experience hiring and interviewing engineers

• Experience partnering with Product Management, field teams, and customers to deliver high quality end-user facing products

• Proven ability to balance hands-on technical depth with strategic leadership.

• Strong technical writing and communication skills, capable of conveying complex exploits to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Expertise

• Experience in a prior cybersecurity-related role - R&D, vulnerability research/analysis, or offensive security

• Deep, practical knowledge of vulnerability classes (e.g., remote code execution, authentication bypasses, deserialization, SSRF). Understanding of what makes a vulnerability attractive and practical for real-world threat actors to exploit.

• Strong background in production software engineering, especially in Python

• Experience with leveraging AI harnesses and agentic frameworks

• Familiarity with secure software development practices, Git version control, and effective team workflows.

• Ability to evaluate technical designs and ensure high-quality, production-safe software.

• Experience working with database systems like Postgres or Neo4j.

Desired Skills

• Experience with vulnerability disclosure processes (e.g., published CVEs) or bug bounty programs.

• Experience in exploit development and reverse engineering

• Experience writing customer-facing technical content

• Experience with SQL and analyzing threat intelligence data and attack telemetry

• Experience with deception technologies

• Familiarity with additional programming languages such as C, C++, Rust, or Assembly.

• Knowledge of containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes.

• Experience working with cloud environments (AWS, etc.) and large-scale software projects.

• Relevant security certifications (e.g., OSCP or equivalent) are a plus.

Travel Required

We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 10% travel.