Director Of Engineering, Security

Director Of Engineering, Security

Nexxen is seeking a Director of Engineering, Security to own the strategy, delivery, and lifecycle of our security program across applications, cloud/infrastructure, identity, data, and SOC operations. This role leads secure-by-design practices, incident readiness, and AI security governance while partnering with executives and cross-functional leaders to deliver measurable risk reduction and compliance at scale.

This role leads Security Engineering domains, including Application Security/DevSecOps, Cloud/Infrastructure Security, Identity & Data Security, and Compliance/SOC integration. The director establishes secure SDLC and architecture guardrails, ensures detection and response effectiveness, governs security vendors and budgets, and drives process transformation. The role collaborates closely with Engineering/Platform on CI/CD and Kubernetes, with IT for endpoint and access policy enforcement, with Data on protection and lineage, and with Legal/Compliance on SOC 2/SOX/GDPR and AI governance.

This role will be based in the New York office. Our team follows a hybrid schedule, working in the office three days a week and remotely for the rest.

Each day can be different here at Nexxen, but some of the things you can expect to be doing daily are:

• Strategy and leadership
• Define a multi-year security strategy and roadmap aligned to Nexxen's business and product direction.
• Chair the Weekly Security Council; represent Security in the Architecture Review Board.
• Lead AI Security Council (monthly) and AI Ethics Board (quarterly); deliver bi-monthly executive briefings on risk posture.
• Build a high-performing, globally distributed security organization and Security Champions program.
• Product, delivery, and value realization
• Drive secure SDLC adoption: threat modeling, secure coding standards, SAST/DAST/SCA, and CI/CD gating.
• Prioritize and deliver platform-level controls across identity, cloud/Kubernetes, data protection, and web/API security.
• Establish SLAs/SLOs for vulnerability remediation, incident response, and control health; measure MTTR and risk reduction.
• Lead build/buy evaluations for security tooling; negotiate, optimize licensing, and manage vendor success.
• Architecture and integrations
• Own target-state security architecture for AWS Organizations (multi-account), EKS, and data center environments.
• Standardize identity and network segmentation patterns; advance zero-trust and least-privilege access.
• Embed policy-as-code (OPA/Conftest/Regula) and supply-chain protections (SBOM, signing, provenance) into pipelines.
• Security, risk, and compliance
• Oversee SOC operations, incident response, and threat detection with measurable readiness and tabletop cadence.
• Partner with Compliance on SOC 2/SOX/GDPR; ensure audit readiness and timely remediation of findings.
• Establish AI governance and risk management for AI-powered products and internal AI tools; manage AI vendor assessments.
• People leadership
• Hire, develop, and mentor managers and senior engineers across AppSec, Cloud/Infra, Identity/Data, and Compliance/SOC.
• Foster a culture of ownership, enablement, and continuous improvement; scale multi-squad delivery across time zones.
• Strengthen stakeholder engagement across Engineering, IT, Data, Product, Legal/Compliance, and executive leadership.

What you'll bring:

• 10+ years in Security Engineering with 5+ years leading managers and multi-domain portfolios (SOC/IR, AppSec, Cloud/Infra, Identity).
• Hands-on leadership with:
• AWS multi-account security (Organizations, Control Tower, IAM, SCPs, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Macie, KMS, CloudTrail, Config).
• Kubernetes/EKS, container security, service mesh, ingress, and secrets management (Vault/Secrets Manager).
• Secure SDLC with CI/CD (GitHub/GitLab), Terraform/Terragrunt, OPA/Conftest, SAST/DAST/SCA (CodeQL, Semgrep, Snyk, ZAP/Burp).
• Web/API protections (AWS WAF/Cloudflare), SBOM/signing (Syft/Grype, Cosign/Sigstore), Dependabot/Renovate, Gitleaks.
• Endpoint/Network security (Palo Alto/Fortinet, Zscaler/ZTNA, CrowdStrike/SentinelOne, Jamf/Intune).
• Identity/SSO with Azure AD/Entra ID, PIM, Conditional Access, SCIM; Okta or AWS IAM Identity Center.
• SIEM/SOAR (Cyrebro; Tines/XSOAR) and threat intel (MISP/OpenCTI); GRC (Drata/Vanta/ServiceNow), Jira/Confluence.
• Proven delivery of large-scale security transformations and measurable risk reduction; executive presence and board/audit experience.

Soft skills:

• Excellent leadership, stakeholder management, and team-building skills.
• Strong problem-solving, analytical abilities, and crisp decision-making.
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to operate under pressure and manage multiple priorities.

Success metrics (KPIs):

• Delivery: Roadmap attainment, control rollout velocity, and on-time remediation against SLAs.
• Reliability/quality: Incident MTTR, alert fidelity, control effectiveness, vulnerability reduction.
• Business impact: Risk reduction trends, P1/P0 incident frequency, and developer productivity via secure enablement.
• Compliance: Audit readiness, finding closure rates, evidence completeness, and AI governance adherence.
• Financials: Tooling ROI, vendor consolidation/TCO optimization, budget accuracy.
• Team: Engagement, retention, internal mobility, hiring velocity, cross-region collaboration effectiveness.

At Nexxen, we value our differences, varied experiences, and collective contribution. We know that not everyone takes the same career path, so if you don't match this job description perfectly, don't worry! We would rather see your application than risk missing out on your potential to make an impact.

In support of pay transparency and equity, the minimum and maximum full-time annual base salary for this role in New York is $180,000 - 219,000 the time of posting. While this is our reasonable expectation this is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, actual compensation is influenced by a wide range of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, education, certifications, responsibility, and geographic location. Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location. We offer a variety of benefits, including medical, dental, vision, disability insurance, 401(k), EAP, parental leave, unlimited vacation, and company-paid holidays. The specific programs and options available will vary depending on the state, start date, and employment type. Our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any questions you may have.