Overview
Join Secure Code Warrior to create a safer digital landscape by assisting companies to secure their software through developer-led practices.
Secure Code Warrior’s mission is to establish new standards for coding that transform the ways software is created. We provide a leading agile learning platform that delivers the most effective secure coding solution for developers to learn, apply, and retain software security principles. More than 600 enterprises trust Secure Code Warrior to implement agile learning security programs, build safer software, and create a culture of developer-driven security. We are a venture-backed company with offices in Australia, the United States, Belgium, Iceland, and the United Kingdom.
Software development is moving through its biggest shift ever — from human-written code, to AI-assisted development, to fully agentic systems where AI writes, tests, and deploys code autonomously. Enterprises face three ongoing problems: developers and agents must learn to build securely, governance of AI in the codebase, and understanding which AI did what, where, and for whom when something goes wrong.
Secure Code Warrior is building the control plane for secure AI software development and is defining the AI Software Governance category. This role ensures the technical foundations of that category are sound, forward-looking, and defensible.
Role
As our first Distinguished Engineer and founding R&D Lead, your mandate is broad and deliberate: tackle the hardest unsolved problems on our roadmap, generate technical intelligence that keeps us ahead of the market, and build prototypes that prove or disprove ideas that will define our next generation of product.
Key Responsibilities
1. You own three things. How you balance your time across them will shift as the landscape evolves and as you develop your own view of where the highest-leverage opportunities lie.
2. Solve the Hard Problems
The roadmap contains technical challenges that can’t be solved by delivery teams in two-week sprints. You lead time-boxed R&D cycles to produce prototypes and clear recommendations: build, explore further, or stop. Current challenges include areas like unified risk modelling, signals for MCP and other services, and AI code detection accuracy, but you will shape this backlog in collaboration with the rest of the teams, not merely execute it.
3. Push into the Whitespace
This is forward-looking work. As developer workflows move toward fully agentic development, new questions emerge. How do you convert human security expertise into formats that AI coding agents consume? How do you govern an autonomous agent that writes, tests, and deploys code? What does code provenance mean when multiple agents contribute to a single commit? How should enterprise security intelligence integrate with the MCP ecosystem?
SCW holds thousands of vulnerability patterns and secure coding challenges across dozens of languages — the raw material for a new class of agent-consumable security intelligence. You own the technical discovery of how to deliver that intelligence, working with content and security domain experts.
4. Keep us Pointing Forwards
The control plane roadmap is sequenced against a model of developer AI adoption, but the market moves fast. You provide structured intelligence that keeps the product team focused on where developers are heading, not where they were six months ago.
This includes tracking real-world developer workflows, monitoring competitive dynamics, scanning emerging technology and academic research, and synthesizing outputs that inform product and content strategy. You will publish a monthly Developer Workflow Pulse and a quarterly Landscape Brief as core inputs to roadmap decisions and external thought leadership.
How you Operate
The Frontier Pod Model: Your primary vehicle for structured discovery is the Frontier Pod — a temporary, cross-functional team formed around a single named problem for a six-week cycle. You convene the pod, define the problem brief, draw in the right expertise, and present findings with a clear recommendation at cycle end.
This model gives you access to the right people for each problem — security domain experts, product analytics, engineers who understand signal pipelines — without maintaining a fixed team that would lack the right expertise for most problems. The pod dissolves at the end of the cycle; follow-on work is either stopped, extended, or transferred to a delivery domain for production build.
This role can be based remotely, with a preference for timezone overlap with our APAC engineering team (Sydney), where the AI Governance and Risk Intelligence domains are based. Periodic travel to Sydney for Frontier Pod kickoffs and leadership alignment is expected.
Organization and Collaboration
You report to the VP of Engineering, with priorities set jointly with the CPTO. You have a direct line to the CPTO for your recommendations. You will engage with external researchers and contribute to SCW’s thought leadership by publishing benchmarks, frameworks, and research that build category credibility.
This is a founding role, not a permanent solo act. If the strategic prototyping backlog stays deep and agent governance work shows promise, a second R&D engineer is budgeted for 2027. You are hiring your future team and shaping what the R&D function becomes.
Who You Are
Technical Foundation
* Distinguished or Principal-level Maker: You are a seasoned engineer with 10+ years of experience and a track record of solving ambiguous, “blank page” architectural problems where the problem definition is part of the work.
* Polyglot Prototyper: You possess a strong foundation in computer science with the ability to prototype rapidly in our tech stacks.
* AI/LLM Specialist: You have deep practical knowledge of AI/LLM systems, agent frameworks, the MCP ecosystem, and the current state of AI coding tools and agentic development workflows.
Research and Intelligence
* Genuine curiosity about how developers work: you follow the evolving landscape of developer tools, IDE paradigms, and AI-assisted workflows because it interests you, not because someone asked.
* Analytical Researcher: You translate complex technical findings into actionable strategic intelligence for leadership, product, and content teams. Your written output shapes decisions.
* Versatile and autonomous: You are comfortable operating across technical prototyping, market intelligence, and external engagement. This role requires range, not just depth.
Working Style
* You thrive in ambiguity. You define what to explore, not just how to build what’s been specified.
* You are a maker first — you prototype to learn, ship to validate, and communicate through working software.
* You operate with autonomy and sound judgement. You know when to go deep on a problem and when to move on.
* You are a role model for the Warrior Code and Engineering Culture Code — collaborative, pragmatic, and a safe pair of hands even when operating in highly experimental territory.
Strong Differentiators
* Background in developer tooling, observability, platform engineering, or application security tooling
* Published work or demonstrated thought leadership in AI safety, secure code generation, agent governance, or related fields
* Experience building or contributing to open-source developer tools or security frameworks
* Existing network in the AI engineering or application security research communities
You're joining us at an exciting stage in our journey, and are key to our future success. You’ll have the opportunity to create impact, deliver on your ideas, and use your spark; experience and expertise to help us live long and prosper.
Warriors have full flexibility. We appreciate that you’ll do your best work when you’re rested and energized. With our business operating globally, there’s no 9-5 grind at Secure Code Warrior. You’re encouraged to work the days, times and in the way that suits your best. We also offer generous leave and work from home options so you can make work work for you.
We’re a tight-knit team that values humility, diversity, giving back to the community and to each other. Giving back is key to being a Warrior, and we do what we can to make the world a little bit brighter as we work to make it more secure.
Diversity. Inclusion. They’re more than just words for us. They’re the hard-and-fast principles guiding how we build our teams, cultivate leaders and create a company where every single person feels safe and celebrated. We have a global, multicultural following—we want to reflect that inside our walls and ensure people come as they are, we like it that way!
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