Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer

About the role

We are seeking a Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to lead our information security strategy. This role involves architecting a sophisticated, enterprise-wide security strategy that aligns with our business goals and anticipates the evolving AI threat landscape. You will also collaborate with business and technology teams to ensure security and compliance postures exceed industry standards.

Responsibilities

• Own spearheading the multi-year strategic plan for information and cloud security, integrating predictive AI defense strategies.
• Collaborate with business and technology teams to ensure security and compliance postures exceed industry standards.
• Influence enterprise-wide strategic direction by blending functional security goals with broader business objectives.
• Empower front-line managers through delegation, selection, and continuous professional development.
• Resolve highly complex business problems, transitioning the department toward proactive, strategic forecasting.
• Manage departmental resources, policy, and personnel with full accountability for budget and performance results.
• Architect proactive, intelligence-driven risk forecasting models and security risk management processes.
• Serve as the ultimate subject matter expert for security issues, including AI governance, secure machine learning pipelines, and space/ground-station asset protection.
• Orchestrate incident response and business recovery plans to safeguard critical global services.
• Participate in external security certifications and manage customer security audits.
• Drive security awareness training programs, ensuring that all employees are trained on information security concepts, emerging social engineering vectors (such as AI-driven phishing), and their role in safeguarding Planet.
• Partner with legal and procurement to ensure information security requirements are included in vendor contracts.
• Stay abreast of relevant security developments, industry-wide events, regulations, geopolitical shifts, and emerging technologies.
• Coordinate development and implementation of incident response plans and procedures ensuring that business-critical services are recovered in the event of a security event, and provides direction, support, and in-house consulting in this area.
• Monitor the external threat environment for emerging threats, specifically looking around corners to implement early mitigations, AI-driven counter-measures, and controls where relevant.
• Act as a positive culture carrier who lives the company values and makes decisions that have a broad impact on both people and company financials.
• Build and nurture external networks consisting of industry peers, ecosystem partners, vendors, government intelligence agencies, and other relevant parties.
• Manage and maturing enterprise risk management frameworks and ISO 27001, ISO 42001, ISO 9001, and CMMC certifications.
• Manage and oversee safeguarding manufacturing facilities and R&D environments against physical threats while mitigating global supply chain risks.
• Oversee the establishment and scaling of an international industrial security program managed by your team to govern global clearance reciprocity, international Request for Visit (RFV) pipelines, and multinational contract compliance (including DD-254 equivalents) in strict alignment with NDP-1, ITAR, EAR, and GSIA regulations.

Requirements

• Typically 10+ years of relevant work experience and 8+ years of leadership experience.
• Deep industry and commercial awareness, accompanied by a track record of thought leadership, public speaking, and published work in the information security industry.
• Ability to separate the genuinely important from the merely urgent, proactively soliciting ideas and information from multiple external and internal perspectives to forecast risk years in advance.
• Ability to cultivate an approachable leadership style that values patience, empathy, and vulnerability, while understanding the impact of your leadership wake.
• Experience leading a diverse group of people, setting clear expectations, and holding people accountable.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with a focus on explaining security topics, such as the OWASP Top 10, clearly and to a variety of audiences with varying technical sophistication.
• Deep understanding of networking and web application architecture.
• Experience with the operations and security facets of cloud environments (Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, primarily).
• Experience with common attack scenarios across the layers of our infrastructure (cloud infrastructure, web applications and interfaces, authentication and authorization, network flows, code quality, insider threat, and the like).
• Deep understanding of information security principles and common reconnaissance and exploitation frameworks.
• Occasional travel required for client and site visits.

Qualifications

• Understanding of a wide range of vulnerability classes including modern adversarial AI attacks, model poisoning, and LLM supply chain vulnerabilities.
• Track record of architecting a multi-year security roadmap that successfully anticipated future technology disruptions.
• Prior or current government security clearance.
• Government national security experience.
• Red team experience.
• Prior experience in a public company environment.

Skills

• Strong leadership and strategic planning skills.
• Proven ability to anticipate and mitigate security risks.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills.
• Experience with predictive AI defense strategies.
• Knowledge of cloud environments and security best practices.
• Ability to manage and mentor a team.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to stay updated with the latest security trends and technologies.

Benefits

Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision plans
Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution
Generous Paid Time Off in addition to holidays and company-wide days off
16 Weeks of Paid Parental Leave
Wellness Program and Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
Home Office Reimbursement
Monthly Phone and Internet Reimbursement
Tuition Reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning
Equity
Commuter Benefits (if local to an office)

Pay

The US base salary range for this full-time position at the commencement of employment is listed below. Additionally, this role might be eligible for discretionary short-term and long-term incentives (bonus and equity). The final salary range is determined by job related experience, skills and location.

Schedule

This is a full-time, hybrid role which will require you to work from our San Francisco or Washington, DC office 3 days per week.