Senior Manager, Security Platform & AI Engineering

Job Description

Zendesk’s Product Security organization is looking for a Senior Manager to lead our Security Platform & AI Engineering team. This is our AI innovation team, responsible for rapid experimentation, prototyping, and turning promising ideas into production-ready security capabilities.

You are a hands-on engineering leader with a strong bias for action. You lead by example, write code, test ideas, resolve technical blockers, and help engineers deliver. Your team will accelerate the development of Product Security systems and platforms through AI, including application profiling, autonomous penetration testing, automated remediation, and reusable capabilities adopted across the organization.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead from the front. Work alongside engineers on prototypes, architecture, implementation, and debugging. Set a practical technical direction and make timely decisions that keep delivery moving.
• Build and develop the team. Establish clear expectations, coach engineers and create a culture of ownership, experimentation, and accountability.
• Drive rapid experimentation. Translate ambiguous security problems into focused hypotheses, working prototypes, and measurable evaluations. Advance successful approaches and stop experiments that do not demonstrate value.
• Ship production-ready systems. Own delivery from initial concept through deployment and operation, including testing, security, observability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Scale AI capabilities. Develop reusable agent harnesses, context pipelines, integrations, and evaluation frameworks that accelerate AI engineering across Product Security.
• Deliver measurable security outcomes. Partner with security and product teams to prioritize opportunities, validate effectiveness, and improve coverage, adoption, cost, and engineering efficiency.

Basic qualifications

• Experience managing software engineering teams and delivering complex systems from concept through production.
• Strong, current programming and system design skills, with the ability to personally prototype solutions, review code, and troubleshoot difficult problems.
• Hands-on experience building AI applications using LLMs, agent workflows, tool integrations, context management, and evaluations.
• A demonstrated bias for action, with sound judgment about making progress under uncertainty and balancing experimentation with production engineering requirements.
• A record of developing engineers, setting clear priorities, and collaborating across technical teams to deliver measurable results.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience leading an AI innovation, applied AI, security engineering, or developer tooling team.
• Experience applying AI to application analysis, security testing, vulnerability discovery, or automated remediation.
• Experience building reusable AI frameworks, evaluating agent effectiveness, and driving adoption across an engineering organization.

The US annualized base salary range for this position is $221,000.00-$331,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.