VP Of Engineering
We're building the most advanced system for malware discovery and analysis on the planet - not as a nice-to-have feature, but as a new foundation for security. We process trillions of DNS resolutions. Analyze billions of files continuously. Preserve every artifact, forever, and re-analyze them constantly with detection logic and intelligence that gets smarter by the hour.
Our architecture is complex. Our mission is clear. We need a VP of Engineering who can lead both.
This is a role for someone who can operate technically at depth - designing the next phase of a distributed system that processes and analyzes petabytes of data every day - while also building the org, practices, and culture that make execution consistent and scalable. Not just shipping fast, but shipping sustainably. Not just building systems - building a team that can evolve them for years.
What You'll Own
Product & Platform Execution
- Drive execution across core platform, infrastructure, detection pipelines, artifact ingestion, and customer integrations.
- Translate product direction and threat research into system architecture, engineering plans, and shipped software.
- Balance speed with quality. Prioritize ruthlessly. Deliver predictably.
Org Design & Leadership
- Build a high-performance engineering org - sharp, low-ego engineers who care about the work and the mission.
- Hire experienced, accountable engineers who thrive with autonomy. Set high standards early, make expectations explicit, and raise the bar as the company grows.
- Create a culture of ownership, curiosity, and continuous improvement - where everyone knows what good looks like.
Collaboration & Strategic Impact
- Work shoulder-to-shoulder with the CTO to align technical vision with product and company strategy.
- Partner with Threat Research to turn detection insights into capabilities.
- Partner with Sales Engineering and Customer Success to ensure we're building solutions that matter in the field.
- Represent engineering in executive discussions. Drive alignment across teams.
Technical Leadership
- Define and evolve the system architecture to support petabyte-scale data, real-time analysis, and continuous reprocessing of historical artifacts.
- Champion engineering quality: secure-by-default design, strong review culture, automated testing, and reliable releases.
What You Bring
Minimum Qualifications
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ in senior leadership roles (VP, Director, or similar).
- Proven track record building and scaling complex distributed systems - including architecture, execution, and operations.
- Experience leading cross-functional teams across backend, platform, and infrastructure - with a strong bias for shipping.
- Deep familiarity with cloud-native systems (ideally GCP), Go, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Experience integrating AI/ML into product features or infrastructure — ideally in applied contexts like detection logic, enrichment, anomaly analysis, or automation workflows.
- Strong grasp of how to apply AI tools to modern software development — from internal copilots to code quality checks, testing, and build acceleration.
- Demonstrated ability to set and enforce high standards across hiring, code quality, technical design, and delivery.
- Strong communication and planning skills - with a willingness to roll up your sleeves when needed.
Preferred Experience
- Background in security infrastructure, malware analysis, threat detection, or high-scale telemetry systems.
- Experience with large-scale data pipelines, ETL, or continuous scanning infrastructure.
- Familiarity with detection logic (YARA, Sigma), binary analysis, or reverse engineering workflows.
- Track record of building customer-facing APIs or developer platforms with high adoption and integration complexity.
- Comfortable balancing short-term wins with long-term architectural decisions - and communicating those tradeoffs clearly.
Team & Culture
- You'll lead a high-performance engineering team where excellence is the default. We value execution, curiosity, and accountability - and we hold ourselves to a high bar.
- You'll be responsible for attracting, growing, and retaining engineers who thrive on hard problems and real ownership - and setting the tone for a culture that expects consistent output, continuous growth, and unblocked collaboration.
- We believe high performance is a team sport. No heroes, no passengers. Just aligned, sharp people working together at pace.
- We're building a team of fully-formed adults who can move fast, think clearly, and deliver together.
Why Stairwell
- You'll help lead the engineering future of a company solving one of the hardest and most important problems in security.
- You'll work with a small, senior team of builders from Chronicle, Google, CrowdStrike, and other industry-defining orgs.
- You'll be part of a company that values depth over buzzwords, impact over activity, and truth over ego.
- You'll shape what comes next and build the infrastructure others will copy years from now.
If you want to build a high-functioning team that ships ambitious systems and outpaces adversaries, this is the role.
If you're looking for process management, incremental iteration, or a place to hide behind layers - this isn't it.