Head of Malware Research & Engineering

Our client is a remote-first company. The project is an innovative security solution for Linux-based environments.

About the Role

This role combines deep expertise in malware analysis and distributed systems with strong people leadership and strategic product ownership.

Scope of Leadership

You will lead multiple engineering teams responsible for the end-to-end detection lifecycle, from analysis and classification to rule generation and release management.

Key Responsibilities

Product & Strategy

• Introduce, own, and continuously improve key metrics for antivirus products.
• Define and prioritize the roadmap across all three teams.
• Drive product initiatives to achieve ambitious quality and performance targets.
• Collaborate with Product Management on strategic customer requirements and competitive positioning.
• Expand the use of AI-driven tools throughout the malware detection lifecycle.

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own the end-to-end malware detection pipeline: from file ingestion through cloud analysis to verdict delivery and remediation.
• Drive architectural decisions for distributed data processing systems.
• Lead modernization initiatives, including AI-powered malware analysis and automated rule creation.
• Design and implement performance optimizations to sustain high-volume cloud processing workloads.
• Oversee infrastructure capacity planning, including compute, storage, and database scaling.

People Management

• Lead three engineering teams across multiple time zones.
• Hire, mentor, and develop engineers and team leads.
• Ensure alignment and coordination across adjacent engineering and operational teams.

Operational Excellence

• Ensure high-quality signature releases through automated validation pipelines.
• Monitor and improve detection rates, false positive rates, and remediation success metrics.
• Lead response to production incidents and systemic bottlenecks.
• Manage technical integrations with external partners and vendors.

Required Qualifications

• Proven experience leading security engineering teams or malware research labs.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years managing multiple teams.
• Deep expertise in malware analysis and antivirus technologies (static and dynamic analysis, signature-based detection, heuristic engines, file classification).
• Strong background in distributed systems and large-scale data processing.
• Experience managing production-grade infrastructure at scale (compute clusters, distributed storage, databases).
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and containerized deployments.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tooling.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in web infrastructure security or hosting environments.
• Background in machine learning applied to malware detection.
• Familiarity with sandboxing and dynamic analysis environments.
• Track record of building and scaling cloud-based security platforms.
• Experience leading geographically distributed teams.

Technical Stack

• Languages: Python (primary), Rust, PHP, SQL.
• Orchestration: Workflow orchestration frameworks, task queues.
• Databases: Columnar and document databases, relational databases, in-memory data stores.
• Storage: Distributed object storage systems.
• Infrastructure: Hybrid environments (on-premise and cloud), containerized services.
• CI/CD: Modern pipeline automation tools.
• Monitoring: Metrics, logging, and error tracking systems.

What Success Looks Like (First 6 Months)

1. Develop a deep understanding of the full malware detection pipeline end-to-end.
2. Maintain progress on active technical initiatives and modernization efforts.
3. Build strong relationships with cross-functional stakeholders.
4. Identify and address the most critical detection quality or infrastructure bottlenecks.
5. Define and operationalize department-level performance metrics and drive measurable improvement.