Head of Security

Exa is an applied AI lab building a search engine unlike the world has ever seen. We build massive-scale infra to crawl the entire web train state-of-the-art embedding models to process it and design super high performant vector databases to retrieve over it. We now power search for Cursor Cognition HubSpot and over 400000 developers and have raised $350m from Lightspeed Benchmark and a16z.

Our ultimate goal is to build perfect search over all the worlds information far beyond Google. If you want to build massive-scale ML systems that will define the way the new AI world consumes information this is the place for you.

What Youll Own

• Define Exas company-wide security strategy operating model risk framework and multiyear roadmap.

• Establish Exas security posture and risk appetite in partnership with the founders and executive team.

• Provide leadership with clear decision-ready assessments of material risks incidents investments and tradeoffs.

• Own security architecture and engineering across Exas products APIs web-scale data pipelines cloud environments Kubernetes clusters model-training systems GPU infrastructure and internal platforms.

• Protect customer data proprietary models training data source code credentials and other high-value assets from external attacks insider threats supply-chain compromise and misuse.

• Build security into the product-development lifecycle through threat modeling architecture reviews secure defaults automated controls vulnerability management offensive testing and engineering education.

• Establish identity access secrets key certificate and service-trust systems across human users workloads training jobs and AI agents.

• Build Exas detection investigation incident response crisis management and recovery capabilities; serve as the accountable leader during significant security incidents.

• Own corporate security including endpoints SaaS applications employee access security awareness insider risk physical-security interfaces and third-party risk.

• Lead security governance regulatory readiness compliance and customer assurance including programs such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

• Represent Exas security program in strategic customer conversations enterprise reviews audits and other high-trust settings.

• Define the security organizations structure budget technology strategy external partnerships and hiring plan.

• Recruit develop and lead an exceptional security team while creating a culture in which every team shares responsibility for security.

• Establish meaningful security metrics and regularly communicate Exas posture priorities and progress to company leadership.

What Were Looking For

• You have built or led security at a technically ambitious rapidly growing infrastructure AI developer-platform cloud or enterprise-software company.

• You have operated with company-wide accountability for securitynot merely responsibility for an individual security discipline.

• You combine executive judgment with deep technical credibility. You can move comfortably between company strategy business risk system architecture incident investigation and implementation details.

• You approach unfamiliar problems with the mindset of both a builder and an attacker and you are energized by security challenges for which no established playbook exists.

This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco. Were happy to sponsor international candidates (e.g. STEM OPT OPT H1B O1 E3). In addition to premium healthcare benefits (medical dental vision) we also offer fertility benefits and a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees.

Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race creed color religion sex sexual orientation gender identity or expression national origin disability age veteran status marital status pregnancy or related conditions criminal histories consistent with applicable law or any other basis protected by applicable law.

Required Experience:

Director