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Salary: USD 185,000 - 327,000 / annual
Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company transforming how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten through a three-sided platform serving consumers, agents, and carriers. The company offers instant, accessible products with no medical exams required, democratizing access to life insurance.
We are seeking a Deputy CISO with strong technical background in security architecture, engineering, and operations to partner closely with the CISO in leading our security organization. This role reports directly to the CISO and provides broad oversight across the security function, acting as a technical leader and escalation point for the team. This is a high-impact position for someone with hands-on technical credibility in building and defending real systems.
Key Responsibilities:
Security Leadership & Strategy: Partner with the CISO to define and execute security strategy, roadmap, and priorities. Act as deputy and escalation point, representing security leadership in the CISO's absence, including with executives and the board. Provide leadership and oversight across the security organization, empowering team leads while ensuring direction stays grounded in technical reality. Build, mentor, and lead security engineers and architects. Own security budget planning, vendor/tool evaluation, and resourcing decisions.
Technical Architecture & Engineering Oversight: Provide hands-on technical review of security architecture across cloud platforms, applications, APIs, and infrastructure. Lead threat modeling and architecture reviews for major systems, directly engaging with engineering and platform teams. Drive secure-by-design practices into the SDLC and CI/CD pipelines. Personally lead or oversee response to major security incidents, including technical root-cause analysis and remediation planning. Stay current with threat landscape, offensive security techniques, and emerging technologies including AI/ML systems.
Cross-Functional Partnership: Ensure security priorities and policies are grounded in sound technical judgment. Communicate technical risk clearly to non-technical stakeholders and executive leadership. Represent the security function credibly in cross-functional forums, backed by hands-on technical expertise.
Requirements:
Required: 12+ years of experience in security engineering, security architecture, or technical security leadership roles with a track record of hands-on technical work. Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field from a reputable institution. Deep, hands-on expertise in cloud security architecture (AWS), including infrastructure-as-code. Strong background in application security, secure software development, and modern architecture patterns (microservices, containers, APIs, zero-trust). Proven ability to read and evaluate system architecture and code at a technical level. Experience leading technical incident response, including root cause analysis for complex, multi-system incidents. Demonstrated experience building and leading technical security teams. Strong communication skills to translate deep technical risk into business terms for executives and the board.
Preferred: Prior experience as a CISO, Deputy CISO, or Head of Security Engineering at a comparable organization. CISSP certification. Experience with AI/ML security, including familiarity with OWASP LLM Top 10, MITRE ATLAS, or NIST AI RMF. Experience operating in regulated industries (fintech, healthcare, SaaS at scale).
