Application Security Engineering Manager

About Synthesia

Synthesia is a world-leading AI-driven video platform utilized by more than 90% of the Fortune 100 companies. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in London with teams throughout Europe and the US, Synthesia focuses on developing products that improve visual communication and enhance enterprise skill development, empowering people to work more effectively and maintain central roles within successful organizations.

Following a recent $200 million Series E funding round, Synthesia's valuation now stands at $4 billion, with total funding exceeding $530 million from top investors including Accel, NVentures, Kleiner Perkins, GV, Evantic Capital, and founders from companies like Stripe, Datadog, Miro, and Webflow.

Role Overview

As the engineering and research teams expand, the complexity of securing these organizations increases. The Application Security (AppSec) team plays a crucial role in this challenge by building AI-native security tools, integrating security into the development lifecycle at scale, and maximizing productivity of a small, highly skilled team.

The Application Security Engineering Manager will lead and expand the AppSec team composed of senior and staff-level engineers who are extremely self-directed and technically expert. This role requires being close to the technical work, including engaging deeply in threat modeling, designing agentic security tooling, SDLC integration, and application risk analysis. The manager will formulate AppSec strategy and ensure the function scales alongside a fast-growing product organization focused on AI-assisted development.

Responsibilities

• Lead, support, and grow the AppSec team by managing hiring, onboarding, performance evaluations, and career advancement for senior and staff-level security engineers, fostering an environment that enables the team to accomplish critical tasks autonomously.
• Develop and maintain the AppSec strategy and roadmap by synthesizing team input, business risks, and engineering context into a prioritized program with measurable outcomes.
• Serve as a credible technical leader who can discuss threat models, security architecture, agentic tool design, and risk considerations, and dive into detailed technical aspects when necessary.
• Establish and manage the team’s operational cadence, including OKRs, quarterly planning, cross-team collaboration, and communication with leadership.
• Act as a liaison between the AppSec team, organizational leadership, engineering leads, Developer Platform, Architecture Working Group, and partner functions such as Legal and Moderation to integrate security throughout the product development process.
• Contribute to and maintain Synthesia’s AI-assisted development security approach, specifically focusing on securing agentic coding tools and assessing AI-generated code security.
• Manage AppSec’s collaboration with broader Security teams, ensuring alignment on shared risks, incident response, and cross-department initiatives.
• Represent AppSec externally with customers, auditors, and compliance programs like SOC2 and ISO42001.

Experience and Qualifications

• Deep expertise as a security engineer with leadership experience, comfortable engaging in detailed technical work and equipped with organizational skills to manage a team and lead the function strategically.
• Strong communication skills for diverse audiences, from technical staff engineers to leadership and cross-functional partners.
• Proven engineering background in application security, with hands-on experience in threat modeling, secure design reviews, AI-assisted SAST/SCA tools, vulnerability management, and security automation.
• Proficiency in Python and JavaScript programming languages, along with experience using AWS or GCP cloud infrastructure and familiarity with GitHub Actions.
• Demonstrated people management experience, including hiring, coaching, and performance management of security engineers at senior individual contributor levels.
• Experience leading or significantly contributing to AppSec programs within fast-growing SaaS or AI companies, especially where security teams scaled behind engineering growth.
• A strong perspective on AI-native security engineering—understanding how large language models and agentic tools shift attack surfaces and can be leveraged defensively.
• Experience working within mature engineering cultures that integrate security as a collaborative partner rather than a blocking gate.

Bonus Qualifications

• Operational and security experience with Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with tools such as Semgrep, Wiz, CrowdStrike, HackerOne, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Actions, StepSecurity.
• Prior roles as Staff or Principal security engineers before transitioning into management.

Company Culture & Values

• Ownership mindset.
• Prioritizing outcomes over plans and inputs.
• Creating an enjoyable work environment.
• Keeping solutions simple.

Benefits

• A flexible remote-friendly position based in Europe or at one of Synthesia’s hubs in London, Copenhagen, Munich, or Zurich.
• 25 days of annual leave plus public holidays depending on your country of residence.
• An attractive referral program.
• Support for work-from-home setup.
• Ability to work remotely for up to 60 days per year from anywhere globally (within reason).
• Outstanding opportunities for professional growth while contributing to a market-defining AI product.

Additional Information

Management roles within the Information Security team require adherence to specific Infosec Team Management Tenets to align practices and values.