Head of Security Engineering

Job description

Collections runs like an emergency room. You show up in crisis, get triaged by a stranger who doesn't know your history and leave with no follow-up. We're turning it into primary care for consumer finance. We started in the hardest, most broken stage, because if it works there it works anywhere. 70 million Americans fall behind on a debt every year. Most want to pay what they owe and can't find a way back. We've serviced over $20 billion in debt across more than 20 million consumers. We see more people with charged-off loans each year than all but the top five US banks. They rate us about 50% higher than the banks that lent them the money. Creditors net over 30% more with us because we collect more and charge less. Most AI strips the human out of the work. We use it to do the opposite. In someone's hardest financial moment we make the experience more human. The more human we make it, the more people recover. Now we're moving upstream, catching people before they default and building across every stage of the consumer credit lifecycle. The consumer in collections today is the consumer who gets approved tomorrow. ABOUT THE ROLE As our Head of Security, you'll help us maintain and radically improve a proactive security posture that ensures compliance with industry standards, mitigates real risks, and enhances client confidence in how we handle sensitive data. This role will report directly to the VP of Engineering; expect to drive strategic security initiatives, implement effective monitoring and response systems, and foster a culture of security awareness and excellence within the organization. WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON - Define and own the strategy for security engineering, deciding where the real risk is and what we do about it. - Hire, mentor, and grow the security engineering team as the function scales. - Lead identity and access management across our systems. - Direct security monitoring, detection, and incident response. - Own our security posture for AI, in both our products and internal tools. - Manage cloud security architecture and guardrails, including data isolation across our multi-tenant platform. - Own vulnerability management end to end, partnering with Engineering to build security into the development lifecycle. - Partner with our compliance function to support SOC2, PCI, and other audit and regulatory work. WHAT YOU BRING TO THE TABLE - 6+ years of experience in security, including 2+ years in a leadership role. - Hands-on software or security engineering background. You've built and run cloud security, identity and access, and detection systems yourself. - Prior experience working in a regulated industry (financial services, healthcare, payments, etc.). - Track record of setting security strategy and driving it to execution at an early- or growth-stage company, where you build the playbook yourself. - Strong communicator and collaborator, with a track record of building trust across Engineering, Product, and other teams. - Preferred: strong understanding of how AI/ML systems work and where they introduce risk. HOW WE WORK - Decentralization beats control. The best calls get made by the people closest to them, not routed up a chain. You'll set the standards that let the team decide without you in the room. - Speed beats perfection. You run tight loops, act at 70% on reversible calls and adjust as you learn. Fast loops beat slow ones. - Candor beats comfort. You'd rather hear a hard truth early than a polite sidestep that wastes everyone's time. - Writing beats the average meeting. Clarity scales. - AI runs through everything here. We built our own code reviewer that beats the alternatives. Our voice AI handles most inbound calls with zero hallucinated payments. Engineers ship 3-4x the PRs they used to. You'll push it further into the work than almost any company you've worked at. - We operate at every altitude. No one here lives only on Mount Olympus, not even the leaders. We get into the trenches to learn the ground truth, then refine our information flows so ground truth climbs as fast as direction comes down. - We build in person, at least three days a week in our office in Nolita, with a growing group coming in every day. Random run-ins cross-pollinate ideas. Face time builds trust no thread can. Building alongside people makes work far more fun. We are currently hiring for this position in our New York office. As a New York City-based company, we are dedicated to transparent, fair, and equitable compensation practices that reflect our commitment to fostering an environment where all team members are valued and supported. We encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, age, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.