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Salary: USD 201,000 - 226,000 / annual
Chainguard is a venture-backed software supply-chain security company that delivers hardened, secure, production-ready builds of open source software. The company serves Fortune 500 enterprises and global leaders including OpenAI, Snap Inc., Snowflake, and others, backed by top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and IVP.
As Principal Product Security Researcher, you will lead Chainguard's product security research function end-to-end, mapping emerging threats and translating them into strategic initiatives that keep the company and its customers ahead of attackers. This is a high-impact, principal-level individual contributor role focused on shaping the company's security direction across all products and platforms.
Key responsibilities include:
- Own the product security research agenda, scanning the broader ecosystem for emerging attack patterns and translating them into clear risks and opportunities for Chainguard and customers
- Shape security direction across products and platforms by partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and Security leadership to embed findings into roadmaps, architecture decisions, and long-term plans
- Drive industry-wide discussion and thought leadership, helping the broader community understand emerging risks and why they matter
- Research emerging threats and trends in software supply chain and product security, analyzing their impact on Chainguard's products and customers
- Design creative mitigations across people, process, and technology into pragmatic defenses that get adopted
- Partner with executive and senior engineering leadership to drive org-level security strategy and influence key roadmap decisions
- Identify systematic weaknesses in systems, structures, and processes, developing plans that fix root causes in sustainable ways
- Mentor and uplevel others across Product Security and Engineering, helping teams think strategically about threats and long-term security posture
- Balance input from across the organization, delivering value for different functions and stakeholders
- Represent Chainguard externally through talks, conferences, and thought leadership
The role is ideal for someone who enjoys turning ambiguous, fast-moving threat intelligence into concrete, multi-quarter plans that change how a company operates.
Requirements:
- Deep experience in product or application security, with a track record of leading research or threat-focused work that drove clear, company-level outcomes
- Expert knowledge across multiple domains such as secure architecture, application/product security, software supply chain, and org-level risk management; ability to balance security, velocity, and reliability
- Comfort owning ambiguous, cross-functional problems and turning them into structured, prioritized initiatives that ship and stick
- Proven ability to present complex ideas to executive stakeholders, gaining alignment and driving decision-making at the highest levels
- Stay at the cutting edge of industry trends, tooling, and research methods; ability to put cutting-edge research into pragmatic practice
- Work independently with high ownership while being a generous collaborator
- Comfort in fast-evolving, uncertain contexts and ability to build structure
About Chainguard
AI / Data / Infrastructure; Legal / Compliance / Risk — software supply-chain security and trusted container images.
