Director, Engineering, Proactive Offense

Get to Know Us Horizon3.ai http://Horizon3.ai is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find, fix and verify exploitable attack vectors before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZeroTM 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 IT Ops/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs. We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers & operators, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools and 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. As a remote first company, we require minimum 25Mbps consumer grade broadband connection. What You'll Do As Director of Software Engineering – Offensive Security, you’ll lead the strategy, design, and development of NodeZero’s offensive capabilities, driving innovation in autonomous attack content, exploit development, and platform scalability. You’ll manage multiple engineering teams, balancing deep technical expertise with product and organizational leadership. This role sits above our offensive engineering leaders and pods (Attack Engineering) and will play a key role in scaling the offensive product organization as we continue to expand NodeZero’s reach and sophistication. Key Responsibilities - Leadership & Strategy: Lead and scale Horizon3.ai http://Horizon3.ai’s Offensive Engineering organization, overseeing teams responsible for exploit development, offensive content, and attack automation within the NodeZero platform. Set clear technical and product direction for how NodeZero identifies, exploits, and validates vulnerabilities across large, complex environments. - Product Ownership: Partner closely with Product, Precision Defense, and Platform teams to define and deliver offensive capabilities that directly influence the roadmap and enhance customer outcomes. Drive execution from proof-of-concept through production-transforming cutting-edge attack research into scalable, productized features. - Technical Depth: Stay hands-on enough to guide architectural decisions and evaluate complex exploit and automation approaches. Mentor technical leads in building resilient, modular systems that power NodeZero’s offensive testing engine. - Team Building: Build, mentor, and scale diverse teams of software engineers, exploit developers, and offensive researchers. Foster a culture of collaboration, creativity, and engineering excellence that bridges traditional offensive and product software development. - Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate across engineering, product, and GTM teams to align offensive innovation with business priorities, and ensure delivery of measurable, impactful capabilities for customers. This is a highly visible leadership role central to Horizon3.ai http://Horizon3.ai’s mission of delivering continuous, autonomous security testing at scale. What You’ll Bring - Proven experience leading and scaling engineering teams in offensive or cybersecurity product development, ideally within a fast-paced startup or growth-stage environment. - Strong technical background in software development and system architecture, with hands-on experience in offensive security domains such as exploit development, vulnerability research, attack automation, or red teaming. - Demonstrated success taking offensive capabilities or SaaS products from concept to market, including driving POCs, MVPs, and production launches. - Deep understanding of distributed systems, automation pipelines, and large-scale SaaS platforms, with the ability to guide architectural and design decisions. - A product-oriented mindset, skilled at balancing technical excellence, customer impact, and speed to market. - Exceptional leadership and collaboration skills—experienced in managing managers, aligning cross-functional teams, and partnering effectively with Product and GTM stakeholders. - Excellent analytical, communication, and storytelling abilities—capable of translating complex offensive engineering concepts into clear, actionable direction. - High degree of initiative and ownership; creative, detail-oriented, and results-driven. - Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equival