Head of Research

We are an early-stage startup, looking for a technical leader to lead our research & innovation department. You’ll lead the Research function at the intersection of Cybersecurity AI and payment fraud prevention. We’re revolutionizing B2B payments with cutting-edge technologies, and need a talented, detail-oriented leader to drive our security research efforts and make a real impact on how enterprises secure their payment flows.

What You’ll Do

• Build & Lead a World-Class Team: Scale our Research group from 2 to 4 experts, mentoring them to tackle an underserved problem in payment security.
• Define the Research Roadmap: Own the strategy for discovering attack trends, vulnerabilities, and fraud methods in B2B payment processes.
• Hands-On Research: Hunt emerging threats—investigate supply-chain and payment-flow attacks, quantify impact, and prototype novel detection/remediation tools.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product, Engineering, and Threat Intelligence to transform research insights into features that enhance our AI-driven security platform.
• Customer & Industry Engagement: Present findings to strategic customer leaders and at conferences; publish whitepapers or blog posts that establish our domain expertise.
• Incubate & Operationalize PoCs: Turn proofs-of-concept into production-ready product capabilities that preemptively defend against next-gen payment fraud.
• Balance Long-Term Vision & Short-Term Wins: Maintain an action-oriented mindset to deliver both immediate research outputs and foundational work for future product pillars.

• Experience: 5+ years in security research, with at least 2 years leading or scaling a small team.

• Domain Expertise: Deep familiarity with enterprise cybersecurity—ideally focused on payment security, fraud prevention ,email security and other related AI/ML-based platforms.
• Technical Skills: Hands-on proficiency in software development using (e.g., Python, GO), and prototyping security tools and capabilties.
• Leadership & Talent-Acquisition: Experience in managing a strong technical team and a track record of attracting, mentoring, and retaining top research talent.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written English skills; able to distill complex technical insights for technical and non-technical audiences alike.
• Mindset: Independent, fast learner, creative thinker with strong analytical horsepower and a passion for solving unsolved security challenges.

Nice-to-Haves

• Background in early-stage startups or high-growth environments.
• Published research or speaking engagements at top conferences (e.g., Black Hat, DEF CON, RSA).
• Experience in AI/ML techniques for threat detection or behavioral analytics.

Why You’ll Love It Here

• High Impact & Autonomy: Shape our Research charter from the ground up.
• Collaborative Culture: Work alongside seasoned founders and engineers obsessed with security.
• Growth & Equity: Competitive compensation plus meaningful equity in a company on the brink of major scale.
• Mission-Driven: Protect enterprises against sophisticated payment-flow threats that no one else is solving.