Director, Engineering

Harmonic Security•Boston, MA

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

Harmonic Security is at the forefront of AI governance and control, providing a platform that understands user and agent intent and data context in real time. This enables security teams to gain visibility and control across all tools and workflows, allowing companies to accelerate AI adoption while mitigating risks. Operating at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, Harmonic is a category-defining company backed by prominent investors. The company is recognized for its innovative approach to protecting sensitive data in real time at the endpoint with minimal friction. Harmonic emphasizes an AI-first approach, encouraging employees to leverage AI tools to enhance their work. The company is establishing its first US engineering presence on the East Coast, aiming to create a fully integrated engineering organization across the US and UK.

Requirements

10+ years of experience managing and leading engineering teams.
A genuine track record of building a US (or other second-site) engineering presence for a company headquartered elsewhere - not just managing a team that already existed when you joined.
Experience hiring engineers from a standing start, not inheriting an existing team and its processes.
Comfort being hands-on early - technically credible enough to make calls and interview deeply technical candidates - with a clear track record of transitioning into fuller leadership as a team scales.
Broad enough technical range to hire well and set direction across customer-facing engineering, platform/infrastructure, and product engineering, even without deep specialism in all three.
Real experience collaborating across time zones with a non-collocated team - ideally specifically with a UK team, so you understand both the practical overlap-hours problem and the cultural texture of working with UK colleagues.
A track record of operating well inside a broader engineering organization led by someone else, rather than needing full autonomy to feel ownership.

Nice To Haves

Have done this exact motion before: stood up a US presence for a company based elsewhere, and know firsthand what makes a second site succeed or quietly become a second company.
Get real satisfaction from the first 90 days of a build - hiring well, setting the tone, getting the first few things right - as much as from steady-state leadership.
Are based on the East Coast, or ready to be, and believe in-person team-building matters enough to build around it rather than default to fully remote.
Are excited by broad scope across several engineering domains rather than owning one deep specialism.
Are comfortable being judged early on hiring quality and team health rather than feature throughput.
Thrive in fast-paced startup environments where ambiguity is the norm.
Leverage AI tools as an engineer and a leader to help your team build smarter, faster and better.

Responsibilities

Hire and build Harmonic's first US engineering team from a standing start, sequencing growth across customer engineering, platform, and product roadmap capability based on business need.
Be genuinely hands-on while the team is small - reviewing code, making early technical calls, and stepping in directly where needed - before shifting toward a fuller leadership role as headcount grows.
Design how the US and UK engineering teams actually work together day to day: overlap hours, handoffs, communication norms, and shared rituals, so the US site is one team with the UK rather than a second one.
Own the engineering hiring bar and interview process for the US market, adapting what works in the UK rather than reinventing it from scratch.
Represent the US engineering function to our VP of Engineering and the rest of engineering leadership, and make sure US context and constraints are visible in company-wide planning.
Partner with People/Recruiting on the practical realities of hiring in the US - compensation benchmarking, employment structures, and market norms that differ from the UK.
Build the operational rhythm (planning, delivery, on-call, incident response) that lets the US team ship independently while staying aligned with existing engineering practices.