Head of Application Security

About the role

Your main goal will be to define and raise n8n's security posture so we can scale product innovation, support enterprise growth, and help engineering teams ship securely by default. You'll build the foundations, systems, and team that make security a practical and trusted part of how we operate.

What you'll do

• Define what "secure" means for n8n across product, platform, and customer-facing security commitments; set the security roadmap and drive pragmatic decisions on the highest-impact risks.
• Build the tooling, guardrails, and workflows that help engineering teams ship secure code without unnecessary friction.
• Embed security into the SDLC through pragmatic reviews, standards, automation, and developer education.
• Own vulnerability management operations, including intake, triage, disclosure, bug bounty coordination, and remediation follow-through.
• Lead incident readiness and response by creating playbooks, running exercises, and coordinating investigations when needed.
• Drive Trust & Safety enablement by improving how we handle abuse risk, AI-related threat vectors, and platform misuse.
• Build and lead n8n's security function over time, including hiring and shaping the team based on evolving business needs.
• Support enterprise growth through strong security questionnaire responses, customer conversations, and clear evidence of our practices.

What you'll need

• Significant experience leading security in a SaaS, cloud, or product-led technology environment, with ownership beyond isolated technical tasks.
• Strong practical experience in application security, cloud or platform security, vulnerability management, and secure engineering practices.
• Ability to define priorities, make trade-offs, and focus teams on the security work that matters most.
• Ability to work credibly with engineers, engineering leadership, and non-technical stakeholders to drive action on security topics.
• Experience operating in ambiguity and creating structure, standards, and momentum where little existed previously.
• Experience leading or coordinating vulnerability disclosure, remediation, and incident response processes in practice.
• Comfort representing security externally and internally, balancing urgency, transparency, and sound decision-making in sensitive situations.

Nice to have

• Experience helping mature security in a company selling into larger enterprise customers with increasing security review expectations.
• Experience thinking through security implications of AI-enabled products, agentic systems, or platform misuse and abuse cases.
• Experience building or improving security automation across CI/CD, developer workflows, or internal security platforms.
• Background with technical products, communities, or open-source-adjacent environments.
• Experience hiring or growing security teams.