Head of Security Research

Dropzone AI

Head of Security Research leading a team of security experts at Dropzone AI. Overseeing threat intelligence, detection engineering, and building an elite security team.

Posted 5/13/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $220,000 - $255,000 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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
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

What you’ll need

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.

Benefits

Comp & perks

company paid health insurance
401K Plan with employer match
Self-Managed PTO
parental leave
more

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

security engineeringthreat huntingdetection engineeringincident responseSOC managementmeasurement frameworksevaluation frameworksautonomous defense systemscyber defenseanalytical capacity

Soft Skills

leadershipmentoringcollaborationstrategic thinkingproblem-solvingadaptabilitycommunicationteam buildinghands-on involvementthought leadership