Director, Engineering

Harmonic Security, Inc

30d•$230,000 - $270,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Harmonic Security is building an AI Governance and Control (AIGC) platform that provides real-time understanding of user and agent intent and data context, offering security teams visibility and control across all tools and workflows. This enables companies to accelerate AI adoption while mitigating risks. The company operates at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, protecting sensitive data with minimal friction. Harmonic has been recognized on the Rising in Cyber 2026 list and is backed by investors like N47, Ten Eleven Ventures, and In-Q-Tel. The company emphasizes an AI-first approach, expecting all employees to leverage AI tools to enhance their work. The engineering team, initially based in the UK, is establishing its first US engineering presence on the East Coast. This US site is intended to be a fully integrated part of the engineering organization, not a satellite office, with the goal of eventually covering customer engineering, platform, and product delivery. This role is primarily a leadership position focused on building the US engineering function from the ground up. The Director, Engineering will be responsible for hiring the initial team, establishing daily operations, and ensuring seamless integration with the UK team. While the role is largely leadership-focused, early involvement will be hands-on, including interviewing technical candidates, making architectural and tooling decisions, and potentially writing code. As the team grows, the focus will shift to hiring, coaching, and bridging the gap between the US and UK offices.

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