Principal Patch & Remediation Architect

Kai • San Jose, CA

7d

About The Position

We are looking for a Patch Management Domain Expert who has lived the pain of enterprise patching and remediation and wants to solve it for everyone. This is not an internal IT role. You will be the human expert at the center of an AI agent product, the person who teaches our agents how enterprises actually patch, where the process breaks down, and how remediation workflows can be safely automated end to end. You'll translate hard-won operational knowledge, software management, patch orchestration, and ITSM discipline, into the research, product requirements, and integration strategy that make Kai's patching agents work in the real world. The person who joins now will define how Kai's agents understand patching, not inherit someone else's playbook.

Requirements

• Startup experience and hustle, comfortable operating in ambiguity and building from zero
• 7+ years of IT experience with deep, hands-on ownership of enterprise patch management and remediation programs
• Demonstrated expertise in IT software management, software inventory, packaging, deployment, licensing, and lifecycle management across a diverse application landscape
• Strong ITSM discipline: hands-on experience with change management, incident/problem management, and ITIL-aligned processes
• Hands-on experience with patch and endpoint management tooling (e.g., Intune, Jamf, SCCM/MECM, Tanium, WSUS, or equivalents) across mixed OS environments
• Practical knowledge of vulnerability management and how patching connects to remediation and risk reduction
• Deep understanding of why patching fails in production, dependencies, testing, rollback, maintenance windows, and change control
• Ability to translate messy operational reality into clear processes, requirements, and documentation
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work across research, engineering, product, and customers

Nice To Haves

• Experience integrating IT/security tools via APIs, or working closely with engineering on integration design.
• Familiarity with ITSM platforms at the configuration/integration level (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira Service Management)
• Experience with CMDB and asset management as they relate to patch scoping and prioritization
• Exposure to AI/ML or agentic automation products, or a strong desire to work at the frontier of applied AI
• Scripting or automation experience (Python, PowerShell, or Bash) for patch and remediation workflows
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, or FedRAMP as they relate to patch and vulnerability management
• Relevant certifications: ITIL, Microsoft 365 Certified, CompTIA Security+, or equivalent

Responsibilities

• Partner with the product management team to define requirements for Kai's AI-based autonomous remediation capabilities
• Research and define how enterprise remediation teams actually deploy updates across workstations, production environments, servers, and applications
• Map the differences in how patching is handled across these environments and capture the reasoning and risk tradeoffs behind each approach
• Identify which tools remediation teams use and for what, clarifying the role of endpoint management, RMM, server patching, vulnerability management, and application update tooling, and where each fits in the lifecycle
• Analyze how ITSM workflows are practiced in reality, how change management, approvals, maintenance windows, and rollback actually happen day to day versus how they're documented on paper
• Document how the CMDB is used in practice, how asset and dependency data informs patch scoping, prioritization, and remediation decisions, and where that data is trustworthy or breaks down

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed