Head of Engineering

About Adversa AI

Adversa AI builds the security platform for AI agents - the core infrastructure that makes the world's AI transformation trustworthy. We work with Fortune 500 companies, Big Four consulting firms, and leading AI companies. Our founders are pioneers in AI security, and our investors and advisors include engineers who built Twitter, Perplexity, Google, Facebook, and Coinbase.

We are a focused, high-conviction team at an inflection point, with a real opportunity to define a new category globally.

Culture & Startup Reality Check

Please read this before applying to decide if you'll love working with us:

https://adversa.notion.site/Culture-Startup-Reality-Check-2b6617e526f680cd9261c655578055e2

About the Role

Our CTO defines the product vision and builds early prototypes. We need the engineering leader who takes that vision and turns it into a production-grade, enterprise-ready product.

You'll report directly to the co-founder and CTO, leading a team of security researchers and engineers. Your job is to translate "what to build" into "how to ship it" - bringing modern software engineering practices, architectural rigor, and a relentless focus on code quality to a team with deep security domain expertise.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll need enough security background to be a credible technical authority for the team, and enough engineering depth to make the right architectural calls, write code when it matters, and set the standard for how the team builds.

What You'll Own

• The bridge from prototype to production: take the CTO's vision and experimental work and deliver enterprise-ready, scalable software;
• Engineering culture and practices: CI/CD, code quality, observability, testing, and secure development standards;
• The technical roadmap: work with the CTO to prioritize, plan, and execute - then own delivery;
• Team growth: hiring, mentorship, 1-on-1s, and performance management as the engineering team scales;
• Architecture decisions: system design, API contracts, infrastructure choices, and technical debt management;
• AI-assisted development strategy: continuously evaluate and adopt frontier AI tools and workflows to maximize the team's output and engineering quality.

Tech Stack & How We Build

• Our current stack includes Python, FastAPI, React, TypeScript, and PostgreSQL, deployed on GCP with Kubernetes.

We actively integrate AI-assisted development tools into our engineering process and see this as a strategic advantage, not a convenience. We expect our Head of Engineering to stay on the frontier of AI-assisted development - continuously evaluating new tools, workflows, and approaches - and to drive their adoption across the team. You don't need to know our full stack on day one, but you should have strong opinions about infrastructure, architecture, and how modern AI tools can fundamentally change how a small team ships enterprise-grade software.

What We're Looking For

• At least 2 years in a technical leadership role (Tech Lead, Staff Engineer, or Engineering Manager) with direct responsibility for a team's output and growth;
• Strong software architecture skills: you can design systems, evaluate tradeoffs, and hold your own in any architecture discussion;
• Hands-on ability: you can and will write code, especially in critical areas - this is not a pure management role;
• Background in security: you don't need to be an AI security researcher, but you need working knowledge of how security products and security engineering work - enough to lead a team of security professionals credibly;
• Experience shipping enterprise software: you understand what it takes to go from prototype to production-ready product that Fortune 500 companies will trust;
• Comfort with early-stage pace: small team, fast iteration, ambiguity, wearing multiple hats.

Strong Advantages

• Experience at an early-stage startup or in a founding engineering role;
• Exposure to AI security, adversarial ML, or AI red teaming;
• Experience growing an engineering team from a small group into a structured organization;
• Track record of translating research or experimental work into production systems.

What We Offer

• Founding-team level influence - you'll shape how the product is built, not execute someone else's backlog;
• Direct partnership with the CTO: short feedback loops, high trust, real ownership;
• A genuinely hard, globally important problem: securing the AI transformation;
• Competitive compensation with significant equity reflecting your role as a foundational leader.