R&D Director - Defining the Future of Email Security

As the world’s leading vendor of Cyber Security, facing the most sophisticated threats and attacks, we’ve assembled a global team of the most driven, creative, and innovative people. At Check Point, our employees are redefining the security landscape by meeting our customers’ real-time needs and providing our cutting-edge technologies and services to an ever-growing customer base.

Check Point Software Technologies has been honored by Time Magazine as one of the World’s Best Companies and recently Gartner rated Check Point email security as a market leader for product, detection and innovation. We've also earned a spot on the Forbes list of the World’s Best Places to Work for five consecutive years (2020-2024) and recognized as one of the World’s Top Female-Friendly Companies. If you're passionate about making the world a safer place and want to be part of an award-winning company culture, we invite you to join us

Check Point Harmony Email Security and Collaboration (Previously AVANAN) is a unique email solution that fully secures cloud email and cloud platforms using AI.

By joining our management team as the R&D director, you will take full responsibility of the email and collaboration product family R&D, manage a growing global team of over 50 professionals, and be at the top of technology for cloud SaaS high scale/high velocity AI/ML based security solutions, serving tens of thousands of global enterprise customers.

If you want to make a real global impact, making the world a safer place join us!

Major Responsibilities

Product Development

• Oversee the design, development, maintenance and deployment of cutting-edge cloud-based email security products and features, serving tens of thousands of global enterprise customers
• Ensure products meet market needs and regulatory requirements while maintaining the highest security and coding standards
• Ensure products are developed in the most cost-effective manner, deployed over multiple regions utilizing cutting edge cloud infrastructure and technologies
• Ensure products are robust, built to scale and support dynamic architecture changes for fast growing changing environments
• Ensure product is fully monitored at the highest level 24/7 by actively implementing a reliable monitoring system across multiple domains and regions

Team Management

• Lead, mentor, and develop a growing high-performing R&D team of over 50 high skill professionals, across the globe. including group and team leaders, software engineers, data scientists, and cybersecurity experts
• Foster collaboration and cross-functional integration between R&D, product management, customer success, and other departments
• Manage our R&D team building. Recruit and support extending our R&D ever growing team to catch up with product growth
• Monitor and report on R&D performance metrics and project progress to the executive team

Research & Innovation

• Drive research initiatives to explore new technologies, threats, and opportunities in cloud, AI/ML and email security
• Maintain a strong understanding of industry trends, emerging threats, and competitive landscape
• Drive innovation through threat modeling, prototyping, and validating emerging technologies

Quality Assurance

• Ensure rigorous testing and validation processes to guarantee the reliability, performance, and security of products
• Implement best practices for software development and quality assurance utilizing advanced automation technologies
• Implement full system monitoring to assure production top availability and performance

Strategic Leadership

• Develop and implement the R&D strategy in alignment with the company's product vision and business objectives
• Adopt AI/ML to enhance threat detection, anomaly detection, and behavior analysis for better email security
• Foster a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and excellence within the R&D team
• Manage and mentor cross-functional teams of researchers, engineers, and data scientists
• Foster a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, and technical excellence

Budget Management

• Manage the R&D budget, ensuring effective allocation of resources to projects and initiatives
• Manage email security cloud cost and drive cloud cost optimization initiatives and activities

Desired Background

Skills:

• Deep understanding of cloud bases SaaS architecture and implementation, with specific vast experience with AWS infrastructure and various AWS managed services
• Experience with development of multi-tenant large scale complex systems, utilizing microservices, containers and serverless computing, implemented with Python, Go, Angular, React and underlying technologies
• Experience with development of AI/ML based solutions
• Experience with secure software development practices, adhering to global regulation SOC, PCI etc
• Deep understanding of security technologies (Email Security – Advantage), threat detection, and prevention mechanisms
• Strong leadership and team management skills with the ability to inspire and drive a diverse global team
• Excellent strategic thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities
• Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills to effectively collaborate with internal and external stakeholders

Experience:

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in R&D, with at least 5 years' Experience with driving large R&D groups, managing multiple global teams using agile development methods (Security and Email security industry – Advantage
• Prior experience with development and management of high scale, innovative cloud-based SaaS used by thousands of global enterprise customers

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree preferred (MS/PhD) in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related technical field
• Industry certifications (e.g., CISSP, GIAC, CCSP) are a plus
• Deep understanding of email security threats: phishing, spoofing, malware, BEC, ransomware
• Familiarity with cloud-based email platforms: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and various email gateways
• Proficiency with email authentication and security protocols: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, S/MIM, TLS.