Director, Pentest Platform

What You’ll Do

As Director of Pentest Platform, you'll lead the strategy, design, and development of the core pentest execution, orchestration, and data infrastructure that powers NodeZero's autonomous testing capabilities. You'll manage four engineering teams responsible for building and scaling the platform systems that execute, coordinate, and analyze pentests across complex enterprise environments. This role sits above our platform engineering leaders and will play a key role in scaling the platform organization as we continue to expand NodeZero's reach and sophistication.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

Lead and scale Horizon3.ai's Pentest Platform organization, overseeing three teams: Execution Engine (pentest runtime and distribution), Orchestration (scheduling, coordination, and workflow), and Pentest Data Platform (result collection, processing, and analytics). Set clear technical and product direction for how NodeZero executes and analyzes pentests at scale across distributed environments.

Product Ownership

Partner closely with Product, Proactive Offense (offensive capabilities), and GTM teams to define platform requirements and deliver capabilities that enable NodeZero's pentest execution at scale. Drive execution from proof-of-concept through production, transforming architectural innovations into reliable, performant platform features.

Technical Depth

Stay hands-on enough to guide architectural decisions around data models, orchestration patterns, and data pipeline design. Mentor technical leads in building resilient, distributed systems that power NodeZero's core testing infrastructure.

Team Building

Build, mentor, and scale three diverse engineering teams focused on infrastructure, platform automation, and data engineering. Foster a culture of collaboration, operational excellence, and systems thinking that bridges infrastructure and product perspectives.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Collaborate across engineering, product, and GTM to align platform roadmap with business priorities and offensive capabilities. Ensure reliable, scalable delivery of pentest execution infrastructure that enables rapid innovation in attack content and customer value.

What You’ll Bring

• Proven experience leading and scaling engineering teams in platform or infrastructure development, ideally within a fast-paced startup or growth-stage environment.
• Strong technical background in distributed systems, platform architecture, and large-scale automation, with hands-on experience in system design, orchestration, data pipelines, or infrastructure automation.
• Demonstrated success taking platform or infrastructure products from concept to market, including driving architectural decisions, POCs, and production launches at scale.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, containerization, orchestration frameworks, data processing pipelines, and large-scale SaaS infrastructure, with the ability to guide complex architectural decisions.
• A product-oriented mindset, skilled at balancing technical excellence, operational reliability, customer impact, and speed to market.
• Exceptional leadership and collaboration skills—experienced in managing managers, aligning cross-functional teams, and partnering effectively with Product, Engineering, and GTM stakeholders.
• Excellent analytical, communication, and problem-solving abilities—capable of translating complex platform engineering concepts into clear, actionable direction for teams and stakeholders.
• 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 equivalent experience).

Required Tech Stack Experience

• Deep expertise in distributed systems design, including service architecture, consensus protocols, and reliability patterns for large-scale systems.
• Proficiency in at least one modern object-oriented programming language such as Python, Go, C++, or C#, with experience building and maintaining large-scale platform systems.
• Strong understanding of container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, or similar) and experience designing systems that run at scale across distributed infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience with workflow orchestration, task scheduling, or job execution systems (e.g., Airflow, Temporal, Kubernetes Jobs, or custom automation frameworks).
• Strong background in data pipeline design, ETL/ELT systems, event processing, and analytics data modeling. Experience with stream processing or batch processing frameworks is valuable.
• Solid grasp of platform design principles, API design, system integration patterns, and CI/CD practices for rapid, reliable deployments.
• Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure and services (AWS, Azure, GCP), including networking, compute, storage, and managed services.
• Strong operational expertise: monitoring, observability, logging, tracing, and incident response for production systems.
• Deep familiarity with network protocols, multiple operating systems (Windows, Linux, macOS), and enterprise technology stacks.
• Hands-on experience building or leading engineering for B2B SaaS or platform products, ideally within a security or cybersecurity company.
• Working knowledge of databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Neo4j, or similar) and experience designing schemas and query patterns for operational and analytical workloads.
• Understanding of cybersecurity fundamentals and familiarity with penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, or automated attack workflows.

What Sets You Apart?

• Experience building or scaling production penetration testing, vulnerability management, or security assessment platforms.
• Background in distributed computing, grid computing, or large-scale parallel execution systems.
• Experience with graph databases and query optimization for complex data relationships.
• Demonstrated expertise in mentoring teams on platform engineering or infrastructure best practices.

Travel Required

We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 10 - 15% of travel to be successful.

Compensation and Values

At Horizon3, we believe that our people are our greatest asset, and our compensation philosophy reflects this core value. We are committed to fostering an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and rewarded for their contributions. Our compensation structure is designed to be fair, competitive, and transparent, ensuring that every team member is recognized and compensated equitably across roles, levels, and locations.

In accordance with various State’s transparency regulations, we provide the following salary range information for this position:

• Base salary range: $280,000 - $315,000. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.
• Additional compensation: All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Application Note

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.