Lead Security Engineer - Vulnerability Response (Imunify360)

About the Role

We are collaborating with a partner company based in Ireland seeking a Lead Security Engineer to oversee an AI-enhanced vulnerability response process that safeguards websites from critical risks before widespread exploitation occurs. This role involves leveraging deep expertise in web application security alongside automation, threat evaluation, and practical product insights to speed up detection, validation, and protection from vulnerabilities. The successful candidate will extend current WordPress security automation capabilities to ModSecurity and Coraza Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules, ensuring all defenses are reliable, tested, and suitable for production environments.

The position includes leading a compact team of security analysts and working closely with automation, quality assurance, and marketing teams to optimize the progression from vulnerability disclosure to both protection and public advisories. Success metrics will focus on accelerating protection delivery, enhancing coverage of critical vulnerability exploits, and achieving consistently low rates of false positives. This opportunity allows you to shape an AI-driven security framework within a remote-first culture emphasizing technical ownership, swift response, and customer protection.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the entire vulnerability response workflow, encompassing intake, triage, analysis, AI-assisted rule generation, testing, deployment, and advisory publication.
• Enhance automated WAF protections by extending AI-assisted responses beyond WordPress plugins into ModSecurity and Coraza WAF rule sets.
• Create, review, and refine ModSecurity/SecLang security rules designed to identify and block real-world web application vulnerabilities and attack methods.
• Develop automated testing frameworks to evaluate rules against known attack vectors, typical traffic, and legitimate requests to minimize false positives and avoid disrupting clients' sites.
• Integrate AI and large language model tools to boost vulnerability analysis and rule creation, ensuring outputs maintain high accuracy through rigorous validation.
• Lead and mentor a team of security analysts by managing priorities, reviewing work, supporting development, and eliminating obstacles for effective and timely protection delivery.
• Define and track key performance indicators like time-to-protection, vulnerability coverage, and false positive rates to continually improve outcomes.
• Automate the generation of public security advisories within the vulnerability response pipeline and coordinate with marketing on standards, review, and release.
• Analyze vulnerability disclosures, advisories, and source code changes to understand exploit mechanisms and translate insights into defensive security rules.
• Balance the urgency of response with precision to protect customers effectively without blocking legitimate access.
• Identify inefficiencies within the response pipeline to enhance automation, testing, and adaptability to emerging threats and client requirements.

Requirements

• Minimum 5 years experience in web or application security fields such as vulnerability research, detection engineering, or WAF development.
• Deep knowledge of frequent web application attack types including SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Remote Code Execution, authentication bypass, path traversal, file upload flaws, and unsafe deserialization.
• Strong practical skills crafting WAF rules using ModSecurity, SecLang, OWASP Core Rule Set, or similar technologies.
• Expertise with regular expressions and capability to convert attack signatures into precise detection rules.
• Competence in reading and assessing PHP code and interpreting vulnerabilities via security advisories, patches, and code diffs.
• Advanced Python programming skillset particularly for creating and maintaining robust automation pipelines.
• Experience working with CI/CD processes, automated testing, and embedding validation within software deployment.
• Regular hands-on experience with AI and large language models, coupled with sound judgment and independent verification of generated results.
• Proven leadership skills managing technical projects end-to-end, from goal definition and design to deployment and impact measurement.
• Product-focused mindset able to assess technical decisions based on customer effect, operational risks, and measurable results.
• Strong ownership, proactive problem-solving, and ability to diagnose systemic issues rather than symptoms.
• Excellent communication skills to explain technical challenges, raise risks timely, and collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Ability to stay composed under pressure, particularly while handling critical vulnerabilities or dealing with incomplete data.
• Upper-intermediate or higher proficiency in English is essential.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with the WordPress security ecosystem including plugin vulnerabilities and intelligence from sources like Wordfence, Patchstack, or WPScan.
• Experience in CVE attribution, vulnerability disclosure procedures, or bug bounty programs.
• Knowledge of Coraza or analogous Web Application Firewall engines.
• Background in exploit analysis, threat intelligence, or security research.
• Experience with Linux server management or the web hosting sector.

Benefits

• Completely remote work setup allowing you to operate from Poland or other approved countries with flexible hours and autonomy in managing your schedule.
• Entitlement to 24 days of paid annual vacation.
• Observance of 10 statutory public holidays.
• Unlimited sick leave policy.
• Financial assistance towards private healthcare insurance.
• Support for coworking space expenses.
• Reimbursement for gym or sports activity memberships.
• Allocated education budget to foster continuous learning and skill enhancement.
• Opportunity to gain rewards for innovative ideas that can be patented by the company.
• Engagement with challenging security problems involving AI-assisted automation, vulnerability research, and practical web protection.
• Leadership and mentoring opportunities while influencing the strategic direction of a vital security function.
• A supportive remote-first culture that prioritizes ownership, career growth, and collaborative efforts across distributed teams.

Additional Information

This role is managed by the partner company which handles the recruitment and selection process. Salary, bonus structures, and other financial remuneration aspects are not specified and should be clarified during hiring interactions. The hiring process integrates AI-powered candidate matching tools that assist recruitment professionals but do not replace human hiring decisions. Candidate data will be processed securely in compliance with relevant data protection regulations including GDPR.