VP of Engineering

Nightfall-Ai; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 450,000; Full time

Job summary

Nightfall AI seeks a VP of Engineering to own the organization end-to-end, combining hands-on technical leadership with strategic governance. The role spans architecture, delivery, and the operating rhythm across the Bay Area and Bangalore, requiring a builder who can still dive into hard technical problems while scaling the org.

The ideal candidate has 8+ years in software engineering with 5+ years in leadership, with startup experience at early-stage B2B SaaS.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering with 5+ years in leadership.
• Bachelor's in CS/SE; MS/PhD preferred.
• Experience in early-stage B2B SaaS and scaling teams.
• Proven track record delivering software on time and within budget.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration.
• Experience leading teams in US and India.
• Hybrid Bay Area-based startup experience preferred.
• Security, infrastructure, or data-intensive systems background is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead and scale an engineering org across Palo Alto and Bangalore.
• Define engineering processes and standards to ensure quality.
• Collaborate with the CEO and senior leaders to execute the technology strategy.
• Mentor engineers and review architecture decisions.
• Ensure secure SDLC practices and least-privilege design.
• Deliver projects on time and within budget.
• Foster a high-performance, inclusive engineering culture.
• Partner with Product to align roadmaps with priorities.
• Lead incident response and drive root-cause analysis.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic thinking

Communication

Cross-functional collaboration

Mentoring

Problem solving

Startup experience

Security mindset

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Software Engineering

Master's degree or Ph.D. preferred

Job description

About Nightfall:

Nightfall is the AI-native, unified data loss prevention and insider risk management platform that protects sensitive data across SaaS apps, GenAI tools, email, endpoint devices, and more. Hundreds of customers, spanning AI innovators to top 10 banks, trust Nightfall to detect and stop data exfiltration at scale. Nightfall enables organizations to innovate freely without the risks of losing intellectual property or exposing customer data. Our agentic platform helps security teams regain their time by putting data loss prevention on autopilot. With automatic remediation, security violations can be resolved automatically before they become incidents, and end-users can be automatically trained and coached in the moment to self-heal violations that they introduce.

Nightfall is backed by leading VC firms including Bain Capital Ventures (Enrique Salem - former CEO of Symantec), Venrock (early investors in Cloudflare), WestBridge Capital, Pear VC (early investors in Dropbox and Doordash), and a cadre of cybersecurity leaders including Frederic Kerrest (founder of Okta), Maynard Webb (former COO of eBay), Ryan Carlson (President of Chainguard), Kevin Mandia (founder of Mandiant), and many others.

About the role:

We're hiring a VP of Engineering to own our engineering organization end to end — architecture, delivery, and the day-to-day operating rhythm of a team split across the Bay Area and Bangalore. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who has grown up through engineering, not just managed it: we're looking for a builder who can still get into the weeds on hard technical problems while running the org.

Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering team in designing and delivering high-quality software solutions that meet business requirements.

• Lead and scale a distributed engineering org spanning Palo Alto and Bangalore, building the systems and trust that make a cross-continent team operate as one.

• Develop and implement engineering processes and standards to ensure consistency and quality across projects.

• Collaborate with the CEO and other senior leaders to define and execute the company's technology strategy.

• Manage and allocate resources to ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the engineering team, staying hands‑on enough to review architecture decisions and unblock hard problems.

• Build and maintain a strong engineering culture that fosters innovation and continuous improvement across both the US and India.

• Stay current with emerging trends and technologies in software engineering and recommend new tools and methodologies to improve our development process.

• Work closely with the Product team to define product roadmaps and ensure engineering resources are aligned with product priorities.

• Champion secure software development lifecycle (SDLC) practices by ensuring the integration of security at every stage, from design to deployment.

• Advocate for and ensure adherence to secure coding standards and design principles such as least privilege, defense in depth, and zero trust.

• Ensure sensitive data is handled securely, leveraging encryption, tokenization, and data masking as appropriate.

• Lead the engineering response during security incidents, ensuring timely containment, resolution, and communication to stakeholders.

• Drive root cause analysis and implement lessons learned from incidents to prevent recurrence.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field; Master's degree or Ph.D. preferred.

• At least 8 years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.

• A track record of growing from a hands‑on technical role into engineering leadership — we're looking for someone who built the org, not just inherited one.

• Experience joining a B2B SaaS company at an early stage (e.g., a founding engineer or one of the first engineering hires) and growing with it through significant scale — ideally 5+ years at one company, moving from IC through senior leadership.

• Proven track record of delivering high‑quality software solutions on time and within budget.

• Strong technical skills in software development, architecture, and design.

• Experience managing and mentoring large engineering teams, including demonstrated experience building or closely partnering with an engineering team based in India — someone who knows how to make a Bay Area / Bangalore org function as one team, not two.

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

• Ability to work collaboratively with cross‑functional teams and senior leaders.

• Strong strategic thinking and problem‑solving skills.

• Startup experience strongly preferred; comfortable operating in a lean, fast‑moving Series B environment.

• Background in security, infrastructure, or data‑intensive systems; direct security engineering experience (data protection, authentication, auditing, threat detection) is a strong plus.

• Based in Bay Area, with a hybrid work rhythm.

Nice to Have

• Experience at a cybersecurity or data security SaaS company.

• Experience with data infrastructure or large-scale data processing systems.

• Track record shipping AI/ML‑powered features in production.

Environment

Nightfall AI takes pride in being an equal‑opportunity employer. We value a diverse and global talent pool and the collaboration that results from having a diverse and inclusive team. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. Our hiring decisions are based exclusively on merit, qualifications, and business needs.

Compensation

Employee compensation will be determined based on interview performance, level of experience, specialization of skills, and market rate. During the offer discussion, your recruiter will review the finalized base salary, bonus (for applicable roles), benefits & perks, and stock options as they’ll be reflected in the offer letter.