[Hiring] Head of Security @Defuse Labs

Role Description

As the Head of Security, you will have primary ownership of Defuse Labs (NEAR Intents) and NEAR One, managing hard security risks across companies operating complex financial instruments in adversarial cross-chain environments.

• Protect against state actors, insider threats, and numerous LLM agents.
• Define and operate security across NEAR Intents and NEAR One, including:
  • Identity
  • Cloud (AWS/GCP)
  • Endpoints
  • Application security
  • SecOps
• Establish security standards, audit strategy, and release gating for production deployments.
• Lead ecosystem-wide incident response across both traditional infrastructure and on-chain events.
• Design and oversee key management architecture across protocol, treasury, and operational environments.
• Define and run a continuous testing strategy, including:
  • Internal security testing
  • External audits
  • Red teaming
  • Bug bounty programs
• Build a lean, high-leverage security function from the ground up.
• Serve as a voting member of the NEAR Security Committee and act as the primary security counterpart for institutional partners, auditors, and regulators.
• Establish security practices for AI and agent-based systems.

Qualifications

• A proven security leader from a major on-chain protocol, top-tier exchange or custodian, critical infrastructure, or a peer ecosystem operating at serious scale.
• Deeply technical with the ability to read a Terraform module and challenge a threat model.
• Excellent at system design with experience in isolating risks and limiting blast radius.
• Fluent in crypto risk, smart contracts, on-chain forensics, MPC, key management, and validator security.
• Clear authority with a direct mandate from the Security Committee.
• Composed in public settings, including incident disclosures and partner calls.

Requirements

• Experience building security programs, not just maintaining them.
• Ability to think from first principles regarding ROI on audits and formal verification.
• Experience designing circuit breakers and dividing projects effectively.
• Knowledge of common hacks in the crypto space.

Benefits

• Opportunity to lead security in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.
• Work with cutting-edge technology in the crypto space.
• Collaborate with a diverse team of experts.

Company Description

NEAR is one of the most active ecosystems in crypto, spanning a Layer-1 protocol, a leading cross-chain intents and settlement layer, a consumer-facing financial app, and a rapidly growing AI stack & agent framework.