Head of Platform Engineering

Company Overview

TENEX is an AI-native, automation-first, built-for-scale Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider. We are a force multiplier for defenders, helping organizations enhance their cybersecurity posture through advanced threat detection, rapid response, and continuous protection. Our team is composed of industry experts with deep experience in cybersecurity, automation, and AI-driven solutions.

Backed by leading investors, we are rapidly growing and seeking top talent to join our mission of revolutionizing the MDR landscape.

Role

As a Head of Platform Engineering at TENEX, you will be a strategic leader responsible for defining the technical vision, architecture, and execution strategy for our core, high-performance cybersecurity platform. You will be accountable for the scalability, reliability, security, and operational excellence of the platform that powers our AI-driven MDR services, leading the teams that build and maintain our foundational infrastructure, data pipelines, and engineering standards. CULTURE is a key value at TENEX.AI—explore our culture deck at culture.tenex.ai to see how we live it every day, with a deep emphasis on collaboration and community that in-person work delivers.

Job Responsibilities

• Define Platform Strategy & Architecture: Oversee the entire service platform, architecture, technology selection, and strategic planning to scale to petabytes of security data and billions of daily events.
• Own the Platform Engineering Roadmap: Prioritize initiatives that maximize reliability, performance, security, and developer efficiency across core systems.
• Lead Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): Define and drive adherence to critical Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs), manage on-call rotations, and minimize toil through automation.
• Drive Operational Excellence: Implement advanced monitoring, observability (logs, metrics, tracing), automated provisioning, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Lead & Mentor Platform Engineering Team: Manage engineering managers and a diverse team of platform, data, and infrastructure engineers. Foster engineering rigor, operational ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with Product Management & Security Operations: Translate product requirements and operational needs into robust, scalable, and cost-effective platform solutions.
• Establish and Enforce DevSecOps Practices: Standardize CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (IaC), security testing, and deployment mechanisms for rapid, secure, and reliable software delivery.
• Foster Innovation: Identify and drive adoption of new engineering methodologies and infrastructure technologies. Leverage cloud-native patterns, advanced data stores, and distributed computing frameworks to maintain a competitive edge.

Required Skills & Qualifications

Platform & Engineering Leadership Expertise

• 8+ years of progressive experience in Software or Platform Engineering, including 3+ years managing multiple engineering teams or a significant platform portfolio.
• Proven track record of architecting, building, and operating highly scalable, distributed, and secure enterprise-grade SaaS platforms.
• Expertise in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, cloud-native architecture, and driving organizational process improvements in large-scale engineering environments.

Security & Technical Acumen

• 10+ years of experience in the cybersecurity, enterprise SaaS, or B2B technology industry.
• Deep expertise in scalable, distributed system architecture, microservices, and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) in production.
• Strong understanding of modern security technologies such as SIEM, EDR, Threat Intelligence, and the challenges of processing high-volume, real-time security event data at scale.
• Strong fundamentals in cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), networking, and building secure and compliant environments (SOC 2, ISO 27001).

Data & AI/ML Platform Expertise

• Deep understanding of modern data architecture, including real-time data pipelines, stream processing, and large-scale data warehousing/lakehouse technologies (e.g., Kafka, Spark, Flink).
• Experience in defining and building the underlying infrastructure to support AI/ML model training, deployment, and monitoring (MLOps), including vector databases and feature stores.

Nice-to-have

• Prior experience in a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) or Managed Detection and Response (MDR) setting.
• Experience with graph databases or security-focused knowledge graphs.
• Background leading teams in high-growth startups or enterprise SaaS.

Soft Skills

• Exceptional communication, presentation, and negotiation skills, with the ability to articulate technical strategy to executive leadership, product teams, and external partners.
• Strong strategic thinking and analytical skills to solve complex engineering and operational problems.
• Proven ability to mentor, inspire, and grow senior technical talent and leadership within the organization.
• A strong passion for cybersecurity and a commitment to building security-first platforms and automation.
• Clear, concise communication skills and a bias for collaborative problem-solving.

Education & Certifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Relevant certifications (e.g., cloud architecture, SRE, or security-related credentials) are a plus.

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