Senior Director, Rapid Innovation Team Cyber Security

Job Description

Sr. Director Rapid Innovation Engineering

Overview

The Sr. Director of Rapid Innovation Engineering is a senior technical leader responsible for accelerating the adoption of new cybersecurity technologies across the enterprise. This role serves as the front line for evaluating prototyping and integrating new platforms and vendor solutions ensuring innovations are validated quickly and matured into production-ready capabilities. The successful candidate brings a rare combination of technical breadth integration expertise and business acumen able to prototype rapidly assess value objectively and deliver enterprise-scale outcomes.

This role requires both hands-on engineering skills and the strategic perspective to influence platform adoption guide enterprise integration and communicate with executive stakeholders. The director of the Rapid Innovation Engineering team will help shape the future of automation AI-driven defense and platform interoperability within the Cyber Defense organization.

Key Responsibilities

Technology & Vendor Evaluation

• Lead the technical assessment of emerging cybersecurity tools platforms and vendors for enterprise adoption.

• Conduct in-depth due diligence on APIs SDKs telemetry and integration to align with security posture.

• Translate vendor claims into validated technical capabilities and enterprise-relevant outcomes.

• Provide structured recommendations on the adoption strategy verify enterprise fit and determine long-term value.

Prototyping & Proof-of-Concept Development

• Rapidly design and build proofs-of-concept to demonstrate integration feasibility and business impact.

• Develop automation workflows data pipelines and cross-platform integrations using Python REST APIs SDKs and orchestration frameworks.

• Document outcomes risks and scaling considerations ensuring prototypes can transition into enterprise engineering efforts.

• Establish repeatable evaluation patterns so new technologies can be assessed quickly and consistently.

Enterprise Integration & Architecture

• Define integration approaches that connect new platforms to enterprise control planes such as Microsoft Defender XDR Sentinel Entra ID Zscaler Wiz ServiceNow and CrowdStrike.

• Architect secure and scalable designs that account for logging monitoring resiliency failover and governance requirements.

• Collaborate with platform engineering and automation teams to mature successful prototypes into production-grade solutions.

• Ensure all integrations align with enterprise frameworks including Zero Trust Protect the Enterprise and Defend model initiatives.

Innovation Leadership & Enablement

• Act as a trusted advisor to domain owners (IAM Endpoint Cloud AppSec) on where and how new technologies enable value.

• Interface with vendors procurement and enterprise platform owners to accelerate onboarding and adoption.

• Provide technical leadership during cross-domain initiatives ensuring innovations connect seamlessly into the broader security ecosystem.

• Champion the use of automation and AI to reduce manual effort accelerate response times and improve enterprise resilience.

Stakeholder & Program Alignment

• Partner with senior leadership to prioritize innovation initiatives that move the needle for CIO CISO and Compliance stakeholders.

• Communicate technical findings and business value clearly across audiences from engineering and IT teams to executive leadership.

• Represent the Cyber Defense Automation & AI Engineering team in vendor discussions enterprise working groups and cross-functional projects.

• Ensure all innovations meet regulatory compliance risk management and enterprise operational standards.

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering or a related technical field (Masters degree preferred).

• 10 years of progressive experience in cybersecurity enterprise architecture or platform engineering.

• Broad experience across multiple security domains including identity endpoint cloud automation data protection and threat detection.

• Strong background in cloud services to include AWS Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

• Demonstrated ability to evaluate onboard and integrate new vendor technologies into large-scale enterprise environments.

• Strong programming and automation skills (Python APIs SDKs cloud automation frameworks Infrastructure as Code Terraform CI/CD).

• Proven success in leading proofs-of-concept and scaling prototypes into production-ready designs.

• Experience with Microsoft Defender Suite XDR Sentinel Zscaler Wiz Entra ID ServiceNow and/or comparable platforms.

• Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence at senior levels and communicate complex technical topics clearly.

• Ability to thrive in fast-paced ambiguous environments where speed precision and impact are equally critical.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate is a hands-on innovator and integrator who thrives on bringing new technologies into the enterprise. They combine technical breadth with the ability to go deep when required ensuring that new tools are not only tested but made operational at scale. They are comfortable engaging with vendors building prototypes running rapid evaluations and working directly with executives to demonstrate business value. Above all they bring creativity speed and technical leadership to strengthen the enterprises cyber defense posture.

Required: In a cover letter (no more than 2-3 pages) with their submitted resume applicants should describe an instance how they successfully resolved conflict and improved collaboration between a product owner and their product team members and the subsequent impact and value added.

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The salary range for this role is

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employees position within the salary range will be based on several factors including but not limited to relevant education qualifications certifications experience skills geographic location government requirements and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical dental vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family) retirement benefits including 401(k) paid holidays vacation and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at can apply for this role through (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

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