Head of Security

Hi 👋🏾, I’m Abhik https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhikpramanik/, Ashby’s Co-Founder and VP of Engineering. I’m seeking a knowledgeable, collaborative, and creative leader to scale our security program and build out our security team. This leader will report directly to me.

You won’t have to build from scratch, as you'll inherit a competent security program that I developed and then our former Head of Security & IT further improved.

Instead, you’ll scale this program through our next phase of high growth. This includes building the Security team from scratch (which means you’ll be a hands-on security generalist to start). By the end of the year, you’ll have defined our security strategy and roadmap, and added people (1-3 individuals), processes, and automation to scale yourself out of routine work.

Ashby All-in-One is powerful and easy-to-use recruiting software that replaces several venture-backed companies' worth of products (often with a better experience). We have notable customers like Notion, Linear, Shopify, and Snowflake. Our growth and retention metrics are best-in-class among our peers: we have tens of millions in ARR, growing >120% year over year, very low churn, and many years of runway.

As a result, Ashby manages a significant amount of sensitive information and PII on behalf of candidates and customers (from candidate addresses to offer details to company calendars), and the volume and types of sensitive data are only increasing as we expand the product. This presents interesting security challenges that you’ll lead and collaborate with other departments to solve.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

Most importantly, I’m looking for someone who is collaborative and approaches security from a first-principles perspective. In past companies, we’ve worked with security teams that blindly follow industry norms and standards, or view their job as reducing risk to zero, both at the expense of velocity and innovation in other departments. Instead, you view Security’s goal as identifying risk and collaborating with other departments to determine when it makes sense to mitigate and when it makes sense to compromise. You don’t throw problems over the fence; instead, you help steer departments toward the right decision for the business.

Secondly, I am looking for someone who is capable of building high-quality, scalable processes. You should be able to zoom out from hands-on work to realize when you need to shift to building a process or playbook. You should also be technically proficient enough to identify opportunities for automation rather than always relying on people to solve the problem.

Finally, I’m looking for someone who is an excellent communicator. The policies, processes, and influence you have within the organization affect over 250 people today and more than 500 people by the end of the year. Your words matter, and you use them effectively to communicate Security priorities, make other departments feel heard, build a strong security awareness within the team, and elicit change.

An exceptional candidate would be someone with a background in Engineering, but it’s not required for the role.

WHAT WE’RE BUILDING

As engineers, we are used to tooling that makes us better at what we do. When we started Ashby, we saw the opposite with Talent Acquisition software. Recruiting teams were leveling up how they did their work, but instead of software meeting this new standard, it held them back.

Scheduling a final round is an excellent example. Recruiting teams wanted to schedule candidates faster, track interviewer preparation and quality, and do it with half the headcount. A recruiter needed to manually collect availability from the candidate, identify qualified interviewers, perform “Calendar Tetris” to find who is available to interview the candidate, schedule on the earliest date possible, and make any last-minute adjustments as availability changed. They must do this while considering the interview load on each individual and whether interviewers need to be trained and shadowing others. 🥵 TA software didn’t help.

As hiring managers, we know TA is a critical function, and as engineers, we know software can do better. So, we built and continue to build Ashby to give TA teams the highest standard of tooling. Software that’s intelligent and powerful. Software that provides insights into where they’re failing and automates or simplifies many of the tasks they’re underwater with. We want other functions and departments to be jealous of what TA teams can do with Ashby, and today they often are!

INTERVIEW PROCESS

This is a crucial role that will lead Security today and scale it into the future. The interview process reflects that both in challenge and length (~5.5h):

1. Introduction call with our technical recruiter, Nadia (45m, live)

2. Introduction call with me (30m, live)

3. An interview with me to explore your past experience running a security program and hiring security personnel (90m, live)

4. An interview with myself and our Head of IT to delve into your technical knowledge and experience. Topics include AppSec, GRC, and Data Security (1h, live)

5. Interview with Benji, our CEO (30m, live)

6. Final round where you meet leaders from Engineering, Sales, and Customer Success (90m)

Near the end of the process, we’ll do reference checks and ask for a writing sample (as a global remote team, a lot of how we communicate is in writing). We treat them as an important signal in our final decision.

In each interview, you’ll have 5-15m to ask questions of the interviewer.

This is also an important decision for you, so I’m always happy to have coffee chats in person or over Zoom to get to know each other.

BENEFITS

- Competitive salary and equity.

- 10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.

- Unlimited PTO.

- A minimum of 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave, covered by Ashby. For folks outside the US, it may be longer to be in line with regional requirements.

- Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!

- $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.

- If you’re in the US, we offer top-tier health insurance for you and your dependents, with 100% of premiums covered by Ashby. In other countries, we provide high-quality supplemental health insurance for you and your dependents, also fully covered by us.

Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. I hope that excites you enough to apply.

Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.