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Apptronik is building Apollo, a general-purpose humanoid robot designed to work alongside people in real-world environments. The company operates at the intersection of advanced hardware, embedded systems, and AI, scaling from development into deployment. As Apollo moves into the field, product security is a foundational requirement across everything the company ships.
You will own and drive Apptronik's end-to-end product security function, reporting directly to the COO with cross-functional authority across hardware engineering, software, systems engineering, and external partnerships. This is not a traditional IT or enterprise security role—you will operate in a physical-AI product context with a distinct mandate separate from the CIO's enterprise and corporate security responsibilities.
Key responsibilities include:
**Program Leadership:** Own the product security strategy and roadmap aligned to product and operational milestones. Build and lead a product security team, handling hiring, mentoring, and org structure as the function grows. Serve as the primary security voice to the COO and executive team, communicating risk posture, program status, and resource needs. Develop a product security charter defining boundaries and working relationships with Test & Validation, Systems Engineering, and the CIO.
**Monitoring & Threat Detection:** Design and deploy monitoring frameworks for Apollo in development and production/field environments, covering firmware, runtime behaviors, communications, and physical interfaces. Define telemetry and alerting requirements for early detection of anomalous behavior, unauthorized access, or integrity violations. Establish continuous security testing pipelines integrated into hardware and software development cycles.
**Escalation & Incident Response:** Build and own the product security escalation framework from detection through triage, containment, customer notification, and remediation. Define severity classifications, response SLAs, and communication protocols for security events affecting deployed units. Lead tabletop exercises and red team efforts to stress-test escalation paths.
**Hardware & Software Security Requirements:** Translate security principles into concrete requirements covering secure boot chains, SoC and enclave security, physical attack surfaces, OS hardening, AI model integrity, OTA update security, and inter-process communication. Partner with engineering leads to review architectures early and drive security-by-design practices. Own security review and sign-off for new features, third-party integrations, and software releases.
**Supply Chain & Vendor Security:** Assess security posture of hardware suppliers, contract manufacturers, and third-party software vendors. Define contractual and technical security requirements for suppliers and AI stack partners, including foundation model providers and cloud platforms. Evaluate data ownership implications of robotics foundation model partnerships.
**OTA Update Security:** Own the security architecture for Apollo's over-the-air update mechanism, one of the highest-consequence attack surfaces on a deployed physical robot. Define requirements for update integrity verification, rollback protection, and secure delivery infrastructure.
**Physical Security & Anti-Tamper:** Define tamper resistance requirements and anti-cloning protections for deployed units. Protect Apptronik IP embedded in hardware and firmware from extraction or reverse engineering in the field.
**Regulatory & Export Control Awareness:** Anticipate and track evolving regulatory requirements relevant to humanoid robotics, including ITAR, EAR, and emerging AI/robotics regulations. Advise on security implications of government, defense-adjacent, and international customer engagements.
**Data Governance & Privacy:** Own the security posture around Apollo's operational and environmental data pipeline from the robot through cloud storage and analytics. Partner with the CIO on data governance frameworks where product and enterprise data intersect.
**Customer Security Enablement:** Help enterprise customers integrate Apollo into their security environments, including SOC integration, access controls, and audit log requirements. Serve as the primary security point of contact for customer security reviews and due diligence. Establish a structured vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty program as Apollo scales.
**Requirements:**
- 12+ years in security engineering or product security, with 5+ years leading security organizations (managing managers, owning budget, defining team structure)
- Demonstrated experience defining and building a security discipline in an emerging hardware or physical-AI domain where threat models, requirements, and processes did not exist before
- Deep experience securing embedded systems, robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other physical-AI products; understanding that software vulnerabilities can have kinetic consequences
- Hands-on expertise across the stack: secure boot, firmware security, cryptographic key management, network and communication security, application-layer threats
- Strong background building security monitoring and incident response programs in production hardware environments
- Track record of translating security risk into product and engineering requirements that teams actually ship, with organizational credibility to enforce them
- Experience with supply chain security assessments and third-party vendor risk management
- Familiarity with OTA update security architecture and risks unique to field-deployed hardware
- Working knowledge of relevant regulatory frameworks: ITAR, EAR, IEC 62443, NIST, OWASP, CWE
- Excellent communication skills: present to C-suite, debate trade-offs with systems architects, write crisp requirements for embedded engineers
