Engineering Lead, Security Operations

Engineering Lead, Security Operations

At Anchorage Digital, we are building the world's most advanced digital asset platform for institutions to participate in crypto.

Anchorage Digital is a crypto platform that enables institutions to participate in digital assets through custody, staking, trading, governance, settlement, and the industry's leading security infrastructure. Home to Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., the first federally chartered crypto bank in the U.S., Anchorage Digital also serves institutions through Anchorage Digital Singapore, Porto by Anchorage Digital, and other offerings.

The company is funded by leading institutions including Andreessen Horowitz, GIC, Goldman Sachs, KKR, and Visa, with its Series D valuation over $3 billion. Founded in 2017 in San Francisco, California, Anchorage Digital has offices in New York, New York; Porto, Portugal; Singapore; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

With the evolving landscape of digital threats and an increasing volume of sophisticated attacks by malicious actors, we have a security policy mandating all new hires complete an in-person onboarding process - no exceptions. Security is our foundation and we prioritize physical identity verification and secure IT setup. While our security and IT logistics require physical presence to protect our infrastructure from sophisticated global threats, this move is equally about our Village culture. We believe that a laptop can be shipped, but our culture cannot.

The mission of an Engineering Lead is to drive the healthy growth of the engineering organization. As an Engineering Lead for the Security Operations team, you are expected to help with hiring high-caliber Engineers to support the growth of the team, mentor and collaborate with team members to work toward their career goals, and drive the processes that can sustain a high-performance engineering team. People make this organization and as an Engineering Lead, it is your mission to cultivate and contribute to Anchorage's culture, coach and mentor team members, help refine our roadmap and provide continuous support with our recruiting efforts.

The mission of an Engineering Lead for Security Operations is to drive the healthy growth of a high-performing security engineering team. As an Engineering Lead, you are expected to hire for growth, create an environment of high ownership, and work with leadership to continuously improve our organization.

As an Engineering Lead for Security Operations, you will refine our security roadmap, drive operational excellence in vulnerability management and incident response, create technology strategy for security automation, and use your influence to facilitate judgment and critical thinking in decision making across your organization.

We have created the Factors of Growth & Impact to help Villagers better measure impact and articulate coaching, feedback, and the rich and rewarding learning that happens while exploring, developing, and mastering the capabilities and contributions within and outside of the Engineering Lead, Security Operations role.

Core Competencies:

• 8+ years of technical experience including full-time security engineering or software engineering, with 3+ years of leadership experience as a formal people manager
• You have experience leading distributed teams, working cross-functionally across varying time zones
• Deep understanding of security fundamentals including vulnerability management, incident response, security monitoring, and secure coding practices
• You've maintained a "player-coach" skillset with the ability to provide technical guidance while managing people and processes
• You genuinely enjoy learning new things and have a proven track record of diving below the surface when faced with uncertainty, understanding the "why" and the "how," not just the "what"

Technical Skills:

• Demonstrate extensive knowledge across multiple security domains (vulnerability management, incident response, security monitoring, application security) with deep expertise in at least one area
• Apply expertise and analytical skills to independently solve complex security problems, influencing solutions across your team and multiple functions
• Contribute to department strategies, security frameworks, systems, and processes, ensuring alignment with broader organizational priorities

Complexity and Impact of Work:

• Take ownership of complex security challenges, selecting the best methods and approaches with minimal oversight
• Lead and significantly contribute to large, cross-functional security projects, driving execution and impact across multiple teams
• Break down large-scale security initiatives into manageable tasks, proactively assessing trade-offs and priorities independently
• Independently navigate ambiguity, anticipating challenges and escalating only for critical blockers
• Deliver results that impact your department, with accountability for tactical security targets

Organizational Knowledge:

• Monitor security industry trends and internal objectives to inform team and department-level goal-setting and decision-making
• Understand and proactively communicate how security work drives Anchorage's long-term growth and competitive advantage
• Lead hiring efforts, ensuring the recruitment and retention of top security talent by submitting referrals, conducting interviews, mentoring interviewers, and actively participating in external recruiting events

Communication and Influence:

• Mentor mid to experienced teammates and help them align their efforts with department goals and company strategy
• Demonstrate strong leadership across multiple teams and departments, proactively improving collaboration and fostering a culture of shared learning
• Lead and communicate complex security ideas and solutions, ensuring alignment across your department and securing buy-in from key stakeholders
• Build trust and credibility by tailoring communication to influence senior stakeholders
• Proactively expand your professional network, developing key relationships inside and outside of Anchorage to drive long-term success

Team Leadership:

• Manage individual contributors and may manage leads or other managers
• Define team direction and priorities in collaboration with department leadership and clearly communicate department and team strategy to team members
• Effectively translate strategy into individual goals, priorities and expectations
• Create an inclusive, high-performance environment
• Take proactive steps to address underperformance
• Invest in team development through coaching, feedback, and mentoring, prioritizing 1:1s and growth conversations tailored to each team member's individual development goals
• Develop team members at multiple levels, both within and outside of your department
• Effectively manage team budget while finding creative ways to improve cost-efficiency
• Fully own team resource planning and end-to-end hiring process, accountable for achieving hiring goals

You may be a fit for this role if you have:

• You have demonstrated experience managing, mentoring, and growing a geographically distributed security engineering team
• You have real-world experience building and maintaining security infrastructure, monitoring systems, and automation tools
• Deep understanding of security fundamentals: vulnerability management, incident response, security monitoring, secure coding practices, cloud security, and network security
• Ability to write scripting-level code in languages such as Python, Go, or bash
• Experience with SIEM tools, security scanning, and monitoring platforms
• You genuinely care about code quality, test infrastructure, and security best practices
• You prioritize risk management, compliance requirements, and business value in decision-making
• You have developed "computer science fundamentals" including concurrency, algorithms, and data structures (Formal CS degree NOT required)
• You self-describe as some combination of the following: creative, humble, ambitious, detail-oriented, hardworking, trustworthy, eager to learn, methodical, action-oriented, and tenacious

Although not a requirement, bonus points if:

• You have experience with applied cryptography
• You have familiarity with common standards and frameworks such as OWASP, NIST, ISO27001, and SOC 2
• Experience working in a regulated financial services environment
• In your mind the word "crypto" stands for cryptography, not cryptocurrency
• You read blockchain protocol white papers for fun, and stay up to date with the proliferation of cryptoasset innovations
• You were emotionally moved by the soundtrack to Hamilton, which chronicles the founding of a new financial system. :)

About Anchorage Digital: Who we are

The Anchorage Village, what we call our team, brings together the brightest minds from platform security, financial services, and distributed ledger technology to provide the building blocks that empower institutions to safely participate in the evolving digital asset ecosystem. As a diverse team of more than 600 members, we are united in one common goal: building the future of finance by providing the foundation upon which value moves safely in the new global economy.

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