Head of Engineering

Posted Yesterday
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San Francisco, CA, USA
In-Office
Expert/Leader
Artificial Intelligence • Security • Software • Cybersecurity
The Role
Leads Pi Security’s engineering organization and technical execution at an early-stage security startup. Responsibilities include owning the engineering roadmap, making architectural decisions, writing and reviewing code, hiring and mentoring engineers, establishing scalable engineering practices, and guiding backend, AI/ML, integrations, and security-focused platform development. The role partners with founders and customers and is fully onsite in San Francisco.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Pi Security

Pi is an agentic product security platform built to help engineering teams secure software as fast as they build it. As AI-assisted development accelerates the pace of shipping code, security review and remediation haven't kept up — Pi closes that gap. Instead of just flagging vulnerabilities, Pi ingests a company's codebases, past incidents, and pentest history to build institutional security memory, traces vulnerabilities back to their root cause across repositories, and delivers contextual, ready-to-merge fixes directly into developers' existing workflows. Prevention guardrails then stop the same class of issue from being reintroduced, and our AI assistant, Sloane, gives engineers instant answers about their codebase's security posture and history.

We're already trusted by high-velocity engineering organizations — including Lemonade, Teramind, Navan, and several frontier AI labs — to cut manual triage time dramatically and block the vast majority of vulnerabilities before they ever reach production. We recently raised $35M to build out the team and product, backed by Brightmind Partners and Third Point Ventures, alongside investors including CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz and Armis co-founders Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael.

About the Role

We're hiring our Head of Engineering to help lead the technical build-out of Pi's platform at a pivotal, early stage. You'll report directly to our CEO/co-founder and work shoulder-to-shoulder with a small, high-caliber team (fewer than 10 engineers today) as we scale the org. This is a hands-on leadership role: part of the week you'll be writing and reviewing code and making architectural calls, and part of the week you'll be hiring, mentoring, and shaping how the engineering team works as it grows.

This role is 100% onsite at our San Francisco office. We're looking for someone who wants to build in person, alongside the founding team, during this stage of the company.

What You'll Do
  • Own execution of the engineering roadmap end to end, working closely with the CEO/co-founder on product and technical strategy.

  • Stay hands-on — writing code, reviewing PRs, and making architecture and design decisions alongside the team, especially in the platform's core systems (codebase ingestion, root-cause analysis, remediation generation, and the Sloane assistant).

  • Recruit, hire, and onboard Pi's next engineers, and put in place the processes, standards, and culture that let a small team move fast without breaking things.

  • Set technical direction across the stack — backend services, AI/ML pipelines, integrations with customer developer workflows (source control, CI/CD, issue trackers) — balancing speed with the reliability and trust our security customers require.

  • Partner cross-functionally with founders on customer-facing technical conversations, including with security and engineering leaders at our customers.

  • Build engineering practices (testing, code review, on-call, incident response) that scale as the team and customer base grow, without over-engineering for a startup's current stage.

  • Champion security and quality in our own engineering practices — as a security company, how we build has to hold up to scrutiny.

What We're Looking For
  • Proven experience as a hands-on engineering leader (e.g., Head of Engineering, VP Engineering, or Staff/Principal Engineer moving into leadership) at an early- or growth-stage startup, ideally having helped scale a team from single digits.

  • Strong full-stack or backend engineering background, with the technical depth to be a real contributor, not just a manager — you should be comfortable in the codebase, not just in planning docs.

  • Experience building and shipping complex, data-intensive, or AI/ML-driven products, ideally involving large codebases, static/dynamic analysis, or developer tooling.

  • A track record of hiring and developing strong engineers, and of building engineering culture and process from a small base.

  • Comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous startup environment, with the judgment to know when to move fast and when to slow down (especially given the security-critical nature of the product).

  • Excellent communication skills — you'll work closely with founders, customers, and a growing team, often translating between technical and business context.

  • Willingness and desire to work onsite in San Francisco full-time.

Nice to Have
  • Background in application security, product security, vulnerability management, or a related security domain.

  • Experience with developer-tooling integrations (GitHub/GitLab, CI/CD systems, IDE plugins) or with LLM/agentic systems in production.

  • Experience at a security-focused company or working closely with security teams as customers.

  • Prior experience as an early engineering hire or founding engineer.

What We Offer
  • The opportunity to be one of the first engineering leaders at a well-funded, fast-growing security startup, with outsized ownership and impact on both product and team.

  • Competitive salary and meaningful equity.

  • Work directly alongside the founding team, backed by top investors and security industry leaders.

  • A San Francisco office and a team that believes in building together, in person.

Pi Security is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.

Skills Required

  • Proven experience as a hands-on engineering leader, such as Head of Engineering, VP of Engineering, or Staff/Principal Engineer transitioning into leadership
  • Strong full-stack or backend engineering background with the ability to contribute directly in the codebase
  • Experience building and shipping complex, data-intensive, or AI/ML-driven products
  • Track record of hiring and developing engineers and building engineering culture and processes
  • Ability to operate effectively in a fast-moving, ambiguous startup environment
  • Excellent communication skills with founders, customers, and engineering teams
  • Willingness and desire to work onsite full-time in San Francisco
  • Experience scaling an engineering team from single digits
  • Experience with large codebases, static or dynamic analysis, or developer tooling
  • Background in application security, product security, or vulnerability management
  • Experience with GitHub or GitLab, CI/CD systems, IDE plugins, or LLM/agentic systems in production
  • Experience at a security-focused company or working with security teams as customers
  • Prior experience as an early engineering hire or founding engineer
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The Company
35 Employees
Year Founded: 2025

What We Do

Pi is an agentic product-security platform that helps organizations secure software without slowing development. It continuously ingests codebases, past incidents, penetration-test reports, and tickets to build a security history; traces vulnerabilities to architectural root causes; detects variants; delivers contextual fixes in developer workflows; and turns past learnings into prevention guardrails that block insecure patterns in IDEs and pull requests. Its assistant, Sloane, answers questions about codebases and security history.

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