Security Research Manager at Guardz

<div class="content-intro"><p>Established in 2022, Guardz rapidly emerged as a noteworthy player in the cybersecurity sphere, securing $85M in funding and rallying a dedicated team of 100 industry professionals. Our vision is to foster a safer digital landscape for small and medium businesses across the globe. To this end, we introduced our comprehensive all-in-one Secure &amp; Insure platform, and continue to grow and expand our team, our partnerships and our revenue.</p></div><p>Guardz is seeking a Security Research Manager to lead our security research vision and execution across identity, cloud, endpoint, and emerging threat domains.<br>This is a high-impact leadership role focused on product-driven security research. You will own Guardz’s security research strategy, work in close partnership with Product, and ensure that deep research insights are consistently translated into production-grade product capabilities.<br>You will build the foundations of how security research operates at Guardz - defining methodologies, processes, and knowledge-sharing mechanisms - while directly shaping Guardz’s detection and security control roadmap.</p> <p><strong>Responsibilities:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Own and drive Guardz’s security research strategy in close alignment with Product &amp; Engineering.</li> <li>Lead the research, design, and evolution of Guardz’s detection and security control capabilities across identity, cloud, endpoint, and emerging threat domains.</li> <li>Partner with Product to define and maintain the security research-driven roadmap, shaping both near-term priorities and long-term strategy.</li> <li>Translate attacker behavior analysis, threat intelligence, and telemetry insights into concrete product requirements and capabilities.</li> <li>Ensure security research outputs are consistently converted into production-grade features, not standalone research or proofs of concept.</li> <li>Define and establish processes, methodologies, and quality standards for security research and detection development across Guardz.</li> <li>Guide the full lifecycle of research-driven initiatives, from hypothesis and validation through implementation, deployment, and iteration.</li> <li>Continuously assess detection coverage, effectiveness, and false positives, driving improvements over time.</li> <li>Lead, mentor, and set technical direction for security researchers, ensuring high analytical and execution standards.</li> <li>Influence product and architectural decisions related to detections, prevention mechanisms, and security controls.</li> <li>Expand Guardz’s research focus beyond identity to cover broader attack surfaces, abuse scenarios, and defensive techniques.</li> <li>Act as the security research authority within product and engineering discussions.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Requirements:</strong></p> <ul> <li>7+ years of experience in security research, detection engineering, threat research, or advanced threat analytics.</li> <li>Experience leading or mentoring security researchers or detection engineers.</li> <li>Deep understanding of modern attacker behaviors, attack chains, and MITRE ATT&amp;CK.</li> <li>Proven ability to translate research into scalable product capabilities.</li> <li>Hands-on experience collaborating with Product and Engineering teams.</li> <li>Strong analytical and scripting skills (Python, SQL) for validation and analysis.</li> <li>Experience with SIEM, EDR, XDR, or cloud security platforms (e.g., Splunk, Sentinel, Chronicle).</li> <li>Strategic mindset combined with strong execution skills.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Preferred:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Experience with cloud security posture, misconfiguration research, or identity attack paths.</li> <li>Familiarity with large-scale analytics platforms (BigQuery, Splunk, Elastic).</li> <li>Experience designing preventative security controls, not just detections.</li> <li>Background in high-growth startups or building research functions</li> </ul>