Director Software Engineering - AppSec Platform

Role overview

Director Software Engineering - AppSec Platform at Harness

As Director of Engineering for WAAP, you'll own the technical vision, roadmap, and execution for a product line defending live, high-value traffic for global customers - and help point the team toward where AI-era protection needs to go next, from AI/agent discovery to red-teaming to enforcement at the AI firewall layer.

You'll split your time between technology leadership, product and roadmap ownership, and cross-functional collaboration - partnering closely with the AST and Software Supply Chain teams that make up Harness's broader AppSec portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Define the AI-era WAAP vision - set strategy for runtime API protection, bot and abuse defense, and AI security as machine traffic and agentic workloads reshape what "web application protection" means.
• Shape the AI Security roadmap - identify where WAAP should invest next in AI Discovery (finding and inventorying AI/agent usage across an enterprise), AI red-teaming (proactively probing models and agents for weaknesses), and the AI firewall (governing and enforcing how models and agents are allowed to act) - a fast-moving space with significant room to define what good looks like.
• Own architecture and platform depth - provide hands-on technical leadership across API discovery, runtime traffic analysis, and detection efficacy, continuing the move toward a unified, efficient architecture across the broader AST/WAAP stack.
• Build and develop the team - hire, grow, and retain strong engineers and leaders, building on managers and senior ICs already in place across the org.
• Partner directly with customers - engage with enterprise customers on escalations, roadmap input, and adoption of new AI-era protection capabilities.
• Drive quality and enterprise readiness - own reliability, incident response, and production health across WAAP, closing execution gaps with rigor and discipline.
• Contribute to the AppSec portfolio strategy - collaborate across AST and Software Supply Chain Security to ensure WAAP's roadmap reinforces a coherent, best-in-class security platform.
• Represent Harness externally - engage with the security community, industry panels, and customers as a credible voice on API security and AI-era application defense.
• About You You are a strong people leader with empathy and growth mindset.
• You lead with technical depth, not title.
• You've scaled distributed systems and engineering teams through hypergrowth, you learn fast in new domains, and you're drawn to the kind of ambiguity that comes with building in a space - AI security - that's still being invented.
• You think like a product engineer even in a leadership seat - close to the technical decisions, close to customers, and willing to get hands-on when it matters.
• Required Experience & Qualifications 15-20 years of backend or platform engineering experience; 8+ years leading high-performing engineering teams.
• Proven success building and scaling engineering orgs in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
• Hands-on architectural experience with high-throughput, distributed systems and scalable APIs.
• Strong interest in applying AI to security problems - discovery, detection, and response.
• Clear, confident communicator who can operate across engineers, executives, and customers.
• Organized, action-oriented leader who drives results while protecting team health.
• BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• A builder's instinct for applying AI/agentic approaches to security workflows, not just security to AI products.
• Power Partner list for software delivery success All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
• At Harness, we care about your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data.
• For additional information on this topic, you can visit our privacy Portal: https://harness-privacy.relyance.ai/ Note on Fraudulent Recruiting/Offers We have become aware that there may be fraudulent recruiting attempts being made by people posing as representatives of Harness.
• These scams may involve fake job postings, unsolicited emails, or messages claiming to be from our recruiters or hiring managers.
• Please note, we do not ask for sensitive or financial information via chat, text, or social media, and any email communications will come from the domain @harness.io.
• Additionally, Harness will never ask for any payment, fee to be paid, or purchases to be made by a job applicant.
• All applicants are encouraged to apply directly to our open jobs via our website.
• Interviews are generally conducted via Zoom video conference unless the candidate requests other accommodations.
• If you believe that you have been the target of an interview/offer scam by someone posing as a representative of Harness, please do not provide any personal or financial information and contact us immediately at security@harness.io .
• You can also find additional information about this type of scam and report any fraudulent employment offers via the Federal Trade Commission's website ( https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams) , or you can contact your local law enforcement agency.

Preferred qualifications and skills

• Domain knowledge in application security, API security, WAAP/WAF, bot/abuse defense, or AI security is preferred Harness in the news: Accelerating Our Mission to Bring AI to Everything After Code Goldman Sachs leads investment in software delivery startup Harness at $5.5 billion valuation How Harness runs 16 "startups within a startup" at scale | Jyoti Bansal Harness Research Shows AI Visibility Crisis Fueling Security Nightmare Harness has been named to the Inc.

Employment details

• Location: Bengaluru [Karnataka] [India]

Application details

• As AI accelerates code creation, the real bottleneck has shifted to everything after the code - testing, deployments, application security, reliability, compliance, and cost optimization.
• Position Summary Join Harness at a defining moment for application security - the moment AI stopped being a feature of the attack surface and became the attack surface itself.

About the employer

• Harness is the AI Software Delivery Platform company, led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7B).
• Harness brings AI and automation to this "outer loop," helping teams ship software faster while maintaining security and governance throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle.
• Over the past year, Harness powered over 185M deployments, 82M builds, 18T flag evaluations, 8M security scans, 9.1B optimized tests, 3T protected API calls, and helped manage $2.8B in cloud spend - enabling customers like United Airlines, Morningstar, and Choice Hotels to accelerate releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by up to 60%, and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency.
• Harness is the leading AI-native software delivery platform, helping engineering teams build, test, secure, and deploy software faster and more safely.
• WAAP also owns Harness's AI Security capabilities, putting this team at the center of some of the most important emerging problems in the industry in AI era: discovering and inventorying AI usage across an enterprise, red-teaming AI systems and agents before attackers do, and building the AI firewall layer that governs how models and agents are allowed to act.

Additional role details

• Harness has raised approximately $570M in funding and is valued at $5.5B, backed by leading investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures, Citi Ventures, and more.
• Powered by Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the Harness Platform applies deep context and intelligent automation across the software delivery lifecycle with governance and policy-driven controls embedded throughout the platform.
• With a global team across 26 offices and 27 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI software delivery - and we're looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster.
• We're backed by $600M+ in funding, led by AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal, and recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant' for DevSecOps Platforms.
• Our Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) team protects the APIs and applications that power some of the world's most demanding digital businesses - at a moment when API traffic, AI agent endpoints, and machine-to-machine communication are growing faster than any human security team can manually review.
• We're looking for a Director of Engineering to lead WAAP's next chapter - taking a product that already protects mission-critical, API-first traffic at scale for global customers and growing its footprint into AI Discovery, AI red-teaming, and AI firewall capabilities as enterprises figure out how to secure their own AI adoption.
• This is a hands-on, high-impact leadership role combining product ownership, architectural depth, and direct customer partnership, reporting into AppSec engineering leadership and working closely with a team that already has strong managers and senior ICs in place across every function.