Principal Product Security Researcher

Role Overview

• Own the product security research agenda for Chainguard scanning the broader ecosystem, identifying emerging attack patterns, and translating them into clear risks and opportunities for Chainguard and our customers.
• Shape security direction across products and platforms, partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and Security leadership to embed your findings into roadmaps, architecture decisions, and long-term plans.
• Operate as someone who sees the whole ecosystem, spots issues early, and helps others navigate with confidence (and just enough healthy paranoia).
• Research emerging threats & trends in software supply chain and product security, and analyze their impact on Chainguard’s products and customers.
• Design creative mitigations across people, process, and technology not just proof-of-concept demos, but pragmatic defenses that actually get adopted.
• Lead large-scale, multi-quarter initiatives that materially reduce risk or improve our security maturity across multiple product lines and platforms.
• Partner with executive and senior engineering leadership to drive org-level security strategy, influence key roadmap decisions, and secure buy-in for big, complex changes.
• Identify systematic weaknesses (in systems, structures, and sometimes habits) and develop plans that fix root causes in ways that persist long after you’ve moved on to the next hard problem.
• Mentor and uplevel others across Product Security and Engineering by helping teams think more strategically about threats, risk, and long-term security posture.
• Represent Chainguard externally through talks, conferences, and thought leadership, sharing what we’re learning and helping move the industry forward.

Requirements

• Bring deep experience in product or application security, with a track record of leading research or threat-focused work that drove clear, company-level outcomes.
• Have expert knowledge across multiple domains such as secure architecture, application/product security, software supply chain, and org-level risk management and you know how to balance security, velocity, and reliability.
• Are comfortable owning ambiguous, cross-functional problems and turning them into structured, prioritized initiatives that ship and stick.
• Have a proven ability to present complex ideas to executive stakeholders, gaining alignment and driving decision-making at the highest levels.
• Stay at the cutting edge of industry trends, tooling, and research methods not just reading the latest papers, but putting them into practice in a pragmatic way.
• Work independently and with high ownership, while still being a generous collaborator who brings others along for the ride.
• Are comfortable in fast-evolving, uncertain contexts and can build structure.

Benefits

• Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
• Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
• 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
• ∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
• 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.