[Hiring] VP of Engineering @Socket

Role Description

Socket helps devs and security teams ship faster by cutting out security busywork. Thousands of orgs use Socket to safely find, audit, and manage open source code. This role is about protecting what we've built while scaling it. It's about designing planning processes and team structure and decision-making rhythms that are lightweight enough to stay fast and rigorous enough that dependencies surface before they become problems.

• Scale the engineering organization from 40 to 80+ people while protecting the velocity, code quality, and culture that makes Socket work.
• Own two intertwined responsibilities:
  • Be the operational leader who keeps the organization unblocked and coordinated.
  • Be the technical leader who shapes architecture decisions and keeps the team executing with urgency.
• Design an operating system that actually works.
• Build planning cadence, sprint structure, and decision-making processes that are lightweight enough to stay fast and rigorous enough to catch risks early.
• Document how Socket makes decisions so new engineers understand the culture, not just the rules.
• Build technical leadership across the organization.
• Create weekly coordination rhythms so teams sync proactively.
• Define clear growth paths so engineers know how to advance.
• Identify the five biggest bottlenecks slowing the team down and solve them by month six.
• Own delivery on major cross-team initiatives.
• Keep hands-on technical credibility by spending about 35% of your time on real technical work.
• Help articulate where Socket's architecture is heading.
• Run skip-level 1-on-1s to understand what's actually blocking people.
• Institute monthly retrospectives so the team learns from each other's wins and failures.

Qualifications

• You've scaled an engineering organization up to 100 people.
• You've built and executed operating systems for large organizations.
• Deep hands-on technical depth.
• You've managed complex cross-functional programs.
• A track record of moving fast and shipping.
• You work exceptionally well with founders and hands-on leadership.
• Experience with security or supply chain security is a plus.
• You care about culture as much as you care about execution.

Requirements

• You remember exactly what broke along the way and how you fixed it.
• You can walk through your planning process, how you manage dependencies, your sprint cycle, and how you surface risks.
• You code regularly and can have sophisticated conversations about architecture, distributed systems, and trade-offs.
• You have concrete examples of coordinating 4+ teams on major initiatives.
• You can point to the biggest things you've shipped in the last year: how long they took, how many people, what the impact was.
• You push back thoughtfully when you disagree and complement our strengths.

Benefits

• Market competitive salary bands.
• Meaningful equity program.
• Comprehensive health benefits for you and your family.
• Flexible time-off, holidays, and winter shutdown to rest & recharge.
• Paid parental leave.
• Remote-first, with quarterly team off-sites.