Founding Head of Product Engineering & Delivery

Founding Head of Product Engineering & Delivery
AI-Native Cybersecurity | CTEM | SaaS | Product Leadership

Company: Kodaowl, Inc.
Location: United States — Remote
Employment: Part-Time Initially | Founding Leadership Role
Compensation: Equity-focused; cash compensation subject to mutual agreement and available funding
Experience: 10+ years preferred

About Kodaowl

Kodaowl is an early-stage cybersecurity and artificial intelligence company building a next-generation, AI-native Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) platform.

Our mission is to help organizations continuously discover security exposures, understand their business impact, make evidence-based risk decisions, prioritize remediation, and verify outcomes.

We are developing an integrated platform that connects asset intelligence, vulnerability discovery, exposure assessment, risk prioritization, decision intelligence, remediation, and continuous assurance.

Our philosophy: Decide with Evidence. Act with Confidence.

We are seeking an experienced founding product and engineering leader who can take ownership of product design, engineering delivery, and commercialization readiness.

About the Role

The Founding Head of Product Engineering & Delivery will own the end-to-end execution of Kodaowl's CTEM platform.

This is a hands-on leadership position combining product management, solution architecture, engineering coordination, and technical delivery.

You will work directly with the founder and a lean engineering team to translate product strategy into a coherent, scalable, secure, and commercially viable SaaS platform.

The ideal candidate understands how to move complex enterprise software from early development through production readiness while balancing functionality, security, quality, cost, and time to market.

You do not need to be an expert in every cybersecurity discipline. However, familiarity with vulnerability management, application security, exposure management, and cybersecurity risk will be highly desirable.

This role requires someone who can take ownership, make informed decisions, coordinate engineers, and deliver measurable results—not simply provide recommendations.

Key Responsibilities

1. Product Strategy & Design

• Translate the founder's product vision into actionable product requirements, architecture, and delivery plans.
• Own product design, feature definition, user journeys, workflows, and functional specifications.
• Develop and maintain a prioritized product roadmap aligned with CTEM principles and customer requirements.
• Ensure a consistent, intuitive, professional, enterprise-grade user experience.
• Evaluate product capabilities against customer needs, market developments, and competitive offerings.
• Balance innovation with practical engineering feasibility and commercialization priorities.

1. End-to-End Product Delivery

• Take accountability for delivering a functional, secure, reliable, and commercially ready SaaS product.
• Break product requirements into engineering tasks, milestones, and measurable deliverables.
• Coordinate frontend, backend, database, security scanning, AI, and cloud infrastructure development.
• Establish clear acceptance criteria, testing requirements, and release readiness standards.
• Identify technical dependencies, delivery risks, and execution bottlenecks.
• Track progress, resolve obstacles, and ensure timely completion of agreed milestones.
• Maintain product quality without introducing unnecessary architectural complexity.

1. Engineering Leadership & Coordination

• Work closely with application, AI/security intelligence, and cloud infrastructure engineers.
• Provide technical direction while maintaining clear engineering ownership and accountability.
• Coordinate application architecture with infrastructure, deployment, security, and multi-tenant SaaS requirements.
• Lead technical design reviews and evaluate implementation approaches.
• Establish practical engineering standards, code review practices, and development workflows.
• Ensure product components are integrated, tested, and functioning as one platform.
• Communicate progress, risks, dependencies, and decisions directly to the founder.

1. Cybersecurity Product Capabilities

Guide the development and integration of capabilities across:

• Vulnerability Assessment and Management
• Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
• Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM)
• Application and API Security
• Cloud and Container Security
• External Attack Surface Management
• Identity Security
• Cyber Hygiene and Misconfiguration Management
• Software Supply Chain Security
• AI Security and Exposure Management
• Threat and Vulnerability Intelligence
• Remediation Management and Validation
• Security Risk Prioritization and Reporting

Experience in these areas is desirable, but strong enterprise SaaS delivery experience combined with the ability to develop cybersecurity domain expertise will also be considered.

1. AI-Native Product Development

• Coordinate the integration of AI and intelligent automation into security workflows.
• Work with AI engineers to develop evidence-based analysis, prioritization, recommendations, and decision support.
• Ensure AI-generated outputs are explainable, verifiable, and grounded in reliable evidence.
• Support intelligent workflows and human-approved automation.
• Evaluate AI capabilities for accuracy, operational cost, reliability, and security.
• Help differentiate Kodaowl through meaningful intelligence rather than superficial AI features.

1. SaaS Architecture & Commercialization

• Guide product readiness for multi-tenant SaaS deployment.
• Coordinate with infrastructure engineering on tenant isolation, authentication, authorization, and data security.
• Ensure the platform supports customer onboarding, subscriptions, trials, and operational administration.
• Establish requirements for performance, scalability, monitoring, reliability, and maintainability.
• Coordinate integration testing, security validation, and production readiness.
• Support the transition from development to initial paying customers.
• Ensure product capabilities are supported by appropriate documentation and operational processes.

Required Qualifications

• Significant experience designing, building, and delivering enterprise SaaS applications.
• Demonstrated ownership of complex software products from concept or MVP through production.
• Strong understanding of modern application architecture, APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, and software engineering practices.
• Experience leading or coordinating multidisciplinary engineering teams.
• Ability to translate business objectives into clear technical requirements and deliverables.
• Experience with product roadmaps, agile execution, release management, and quality assurance.
• Familiarity with AI/LLM integration, intelligent automation, or AI-enabled enterprise applications.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and technical decision-making abilities.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work directly with a founder.
• Willingness to take hands-on responsibility in a lean startup environment.

Preferred Technical Experience

Experience with some of the following technologies is advantageous:

• Python, FastAPI, Node.js, TypeScript, and React
• PostgreSQL and relational database architecture
• REST APIs and integration frameworks
• Azure, AWS, or other cloud platforms
• Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD
• Multi-tenant SaaS architecture
• Authentication, authorization, and RBAC
• AI/LLM applications, agents, and intelligent workflows
• Security scanning tools and vulnerability intelligence integrations

Expertise in every technology is not required. Architectural judgment, engineering leadership, and delivery experience are more important than familiarity with a particular framework.

Preferred Cybersecurity Knowledge

Understanding of one or more of the following is highly desirable:

• Vulnerability management and risk prioritization
• Application security and OWASP principles
• Cybersecurity exposure management
• Security scanning and assessment technologies
• Cloud security and misconfiguration management
• Threat intelligence and vulnerability intelligence
• Security remediation and validation
• Enterprise security operations and risk management

Candidates with strong SaaS product leadership experience who are willing and able to develop deeper cybersecurity expertise are encouraged to apply.

What Success Looks Like

The successful candidate will:

• Establish clear ownership of Kodaowl's CTEM product delivery.
• Translate product strategy into an executable engineering roadmap.
• Maintain effective coordination across engineering disciplines.
• Deliver integrated, tested, and production-ready functionality.
• Improve product consistency, usability, security, and reliability.
• Identify and resolve technical and delivery risks proactively.
• Advance the platform toward commercial launch and customer adoption.
• Provide the founder with transparent reporting on progress, priorities, and outcomes.

Working Arrangement

Kodaowl is an early-stage, founder-funded company operating with a lean engineering team.

The position will initially be part-time, with working hours and responsibilities agreed upon in advance.

We are seeking someone interested in contributing to the development of a long-term technology business and potentially growing into a broader leadership role as the company expands.

Compensation will be discussed based on experience, responsibilities, availability, and the company's stage of development.

Who Should Apply

This opportunity is particularly suited to experienced:

• Heads of Engineering or Product Engineering
• Technical Product Leaders
• Engineering Directors
• Principal Software Architects with delivery leadership experience
• Fractional CTOs with demonstrated hands-on product delivery experience
• Founding Engineers who have successfully led enterprise SaaS commercialization

We value demonstrated execution, sound technical judgment, accountability, collaboration, and the ability to turn ambitious product ideas into reliable software.

Join Kodaowl in building the next generation of AI-native cybersecurity exposure management.