Head of Cyber Defense & Trust

Gong harnesses the power of AI to transform how revenue teams win. The Gong Revenue AI Operating System unifies data, insights, and workflows into a single, trusted system that observes, guides, and acts alongside the world’s most successful revenue teams. Powered by the Gong Revenue Graph, AI-powered intelligence, specialized agents, and trusted applications, Gong helps more than 5,000 companies around the world deeply understand their teams and customers, automate critical sales workflows, and close more deals with less effort. For more information, visit www.gong.io.

At Gong, you will join a company built on innovative products, ambitious goals, and passionate people. We are shaping the future of revenue intelligence and we want people who are excited to build what comes next. You will work with a team that dreams big, moves fast, and cares deeply about the craft and about each other. Here, transparency and trust are core to how we operate, and every person has the opportunity to make a visible impact. If you want to grow, stretch, and do work that truly matters, Gong is the place to do the best work of your career.

You MUST be located in one of our hub locations (San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Austin, New York City Metro, Chicago) due to our hybrid work model.

This is not a traditional security role.

You won't be inheriting a mature, stable program. You'll be architecting one for an AI-native SaaS company operating at scale, where the threat surface evolves daily and identity is the new perimeter. You will own two of the most consequential security domains in the business: Cyber Defense Engineering (CDE), the fusion of Security Engineering and Security Operations, and Identity and Access Management (IAM). These aren't siloed functions here. They are the foundation of customer trust, product integrity, and competitive advantage.

You'll operate at the intersection of builder and strategist: designing systems with your team, making architectural calls, and partnering at the executive level to ensure security is a force multiplier, not a speed bump.

What You'll Own

Lead Cyber Defense Engineering: Detect, Respond, and Automate at Scale

Design and operate a hyper-automated security operations function for a modern, multi-cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) SaaS environment. You'll leverage advanced platforms, including Google SecOps, Wiz, Sentinel, and CrowdStrike, to achieve near real-time visibility and response across cloud infrastructure, while minimizing operational noise and maximizing signal fidelity. Your team won't just react to threats; they'll engineer the systems that make reactions near-automatic.

Secure the AI-Native Environment

Gong is an AI company, and that changes everything about your threat model. You'll architect security controls that address the unique risks of large-scale data pipelines, model training environments, and AI-generated intellectual property, domains where conventional frameworks fall short and first-principles thinking is required.

Build a Zero-Trust Identity Ecosystem

Own and execute the enterprise-wide IAM strategy, unifying identity management across all cloud platforms, corporate environments, and the product itself. You'll move beyond legacy controls to define a multi-year roadmap rooted in Zero Trust principles, cloud-native identity platforms, and passwordless authentication. Identity won't be an IT problem here; it will be a security architecture.

Translate Compliance into Security Outcomes

Partner with the broader security organization to ensure the technical foundation of Gong's cloud environment supports enterprise compliance requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, HIPAA, FedRAMP/NIST). You'll make compliance a natural output of strong security architecture, not a parallel workstream.

Build and Develop the Team

Recruit, develop, and lead a high-performing, globally distributed team of security engineers and identity architects. You build cultures where craft matters, feedback flows, and ownership is clear.

What You Bring

12–15+ years of progressive security experience, with meaningful leadership in a high-growth SaaS or cloud-native environment.

Deep CDE expertise: hands-on background in Security Engineering and/or Security Operations, with experience designing detection pipelines, incident response playbooks, and automation frameworks at scale.

Enterprise IAM mastery: proven track record designing and executing IAM strategies that span cloud platforms, SaaS applications, and corporate infrastructure, including Zero Trust architecture and passwordless or MFA-first approaches.

Multi-cloud fluency: practical experience securing workloads across AWS, GCP, and/or Azure, and familiarity with modern CSPM, SIEM/SOAR, and endpoint security tooling (e.g., Wiz, Google SecOps, Sentinel, CrowdStrike).

Compliance and risk fluency: working knowledge of NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, SOC 2, and related frameworks, and the ability to turn them into security architecture decisions, not just documentation.

Builder mentality with executive presence: you can write a detection rule and present a board-ready risk summary. You don't choose between technical credibility and strategic communication, you bring both.

PERKS & BENEFITS

We offer Gongsters a variety of medical, dental, and vision plans, designed to fit you and your family’s needs.

Wellbeing Fund - flexible wellness stipend to support a healthy lifestyle.

Mental Health benefits with covered therapy and coaching.

401(k) program to help you invest in your future.

Education & Learning Stipend For Personal Growth And Development.

Flexible vacation time to promote a healthy work-life blend.

Paid parental leave to support you and your family.

Company-wide recharge days each quarter.

Work from home stipend to help you succeed in a remote environment.

The annual salary hiring range for this position is $234,000 - $335,000 USD.

Compensation is based on factors unique to each candidate, including, but not limited to, job-related skills, qualification, education, experience, and location. At Gong, we have a location-based compensation structure, which means there may be a different range for candidates in other locations. The total compensation package for this position, in addition to base compensation, may include incentive compensation, bonus, equity, and benefits. Some of our sales compensation programs also offer the potential to achieve above targeted earnings for those who exceed their sales targets.

We are always looking for outstanding Gongsters! So if this sounds like something that interests you regardless of compensation, please reach out. We may have more roles for you to consider and would love to connect.

We have noticed a rise in recruiting impersonations across the industry, where scammers attempt to access candidates' personal and financial information through fake interviews and offers. All Gong recruiting email communications will always come from the @gong.io domain. Any outreach claiming to be from Gong via other sources should be ignored.

Gong is an equal-opportunity employer. We believe that diversity is integral to our success, and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, military status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

To review Gong's privacy policy, visit

https://www.gong.io/gong-io-job-candidates-privacy-notice/

for more details.

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