Rapid7 Leadership & Management

Rapid7’s leadership culture is built around trust, openness and the responsibility to help teams make meaningful contributions at scale. Leaders empower their teams by creating space for honest conversations, encouraging people to challenge ideas and giving them the business context they need to make strong decisions. That combination of autonomy and accountability helps teams move past conflict, take ownership of outcomes and contribute to Rapid7’s mission to create a more secure digital world.

“Responsibility is directly tied to the level of autonomy I want them and all of my leaders to have. [They need] business context around what’s going on not just inside of the company, but outside in the market, so that they can make the best decisions on a day-to-day basis and lead their teams to the best outcomes.”
 

Which milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?

The most significant milestone for Rapid7 this year is achieving market leadership status and third-party recognition, for both our platform and overarching company strategy. We had a fantastic 2025 in terms of analyst validation, and it was incredibly rewarding to witness, but what really gets me excited is seeing our competitors pivot their own strategies to mirror ours. When the rest of the market is trying to align with your vision because they see your customers excelling — that is the ultimate metric of success.

Everything that Rapid7 does is backed by a 25-year obsession with research. We held over 300 granted patents at the end of 2025, with a massive chunk of those specifically representing the AI/ML technologies we’ve built directly into our SOC. We reinvest roughly a quarter of our revenue back into research and development each year because we have always believed that to be a great security partner, you have to be a research company first — and that long-term bet on an integrated platform is paying off for our customers.

Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?

Rapid7’s competitive edge, right now, is our ability to deliver pre-emptive security. This industry has long been crowded with endpoint-centric providers, playing a game of cat-and-mouse by blocking a threat and scrambling to figure out the impact afterwards. This model is simply not sustainable or comprehensive enough to address today’s threat landscape. We’re excelling because we help our customers understand their complete attack surface before a breach even starts, and close the door before the adversary reaches it.

The proof is in the shift we are seeing in the market. Organizations are moving away from “black box” providers, or companies that keep their methodology under wraps, because they’ve realized that a reactive posture is not enough when 25 percent of incidents begin with vulnerability exploitation. They’re choosing our Command Platform because it integrates asset, cloud, and exposure data into an AI-driven engine that actually shines a light on where attackers are going to strike — building a level of resilience that legacy tools simply cannot match.

What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?

The expansion that has me most excited is Vector Command. I’m keeping a close eye on how many of our customers are taking their programs to the next level by moving beyond standard, point-in-time penetration testing and shifting toward a continuous red-teaming service. And while traditional, occasional pentesting remains a vital cornerstone for security, Vector Command adds that critical next layer — a persistent offensive partner that validates defenses against the latest threat research every single day.

Success here is not about giving a customer a longer list of problems, it’s about helping them move from asking “what could be wrong?” to truly knowing “what would actually work,” and then leading them down the roadmap to remediation. Watching our customers augment their static audits with an always-on offensive posture is the clearest sign that we are helping them achieve true, measurable resilience.

Rapid7’s leadership culture asks managers to create the conditions where people can do honest, high-quality work. Leaders like Nancy Li focus on building trust through courage, empathy and vulnerability, encouraging teams to speak openly, learn from mistakes and hold one another accountable for growth. By modeling continuous learning themselves, managers help create teams that are more willing to challenge assumptions, share difficult truths and innovate together.

“It requires an immense amount of courage and empathy to build trust and connect with those around us so that we can build a culture where people feel safe to speak uncomfortable truths, fail and learn valuable lessons.”