Director Of Security

## About the Role Earnest empowers ambitious professionals to make confident financial decisions and build the life they envision. *Earnies are committed to helping borrowers move forward with confidence by offering smarter borrowing options with a clearer path to taking control of their debt. If you're as passionate as we are about our mission, read more below, and let's build something great together.* The Director of Security will report to the Chief Technology Officer. As the Director of Security, you will: * Lead and scale the security team: Directly manage, mentor, and grow emerging security leaders and engineers, including a Sr Security Engineer, Security Architect, and your existing team members. * Define and evolve security strategy: Build and mature a comprehensive security program from an early stage, aligning security initiatives with overall business and product goals. * Embed security into engineering workflows: Collaborate closely with engineering and product teams to integrate security early in system designs (such as threat and design reviews) and into CI/CD pipelines. * Govern compliance and third-party risk: Own security architecture, operations, engineering, IT compliance, and third-party risk assessment programs to satisfy regulatory and fintech expectations. * Act as a risk-management partner: Serve as a pragmatic advisor who assesses risk and provides business-enabling guardrails rather than acting as a strict gatekeeper. * Communicate across stakeholders: Effectively translate complex security concepts and major risks to non-technical stakeholders, executive leadership, and cross-functional partners. ## About You * **Experienced security leader:** You have successfully led, mentored, and grown small security teams within highly-regulated, growth-stage businesses. * **Public company familiarity:** You have likely operated within a public company environment and understand the distinct requirements that come with it. * **Strong communicator & influencer:** You possess a strong ability to lead through influence, build alignment, and navigate corporate organizational structures effectively. * **Pragmatic risk balancer:** You have a proven track record of understanding business growth needs and balancing risk mitigation with operational speed and employee experience. * **Technical & architectural depth:** You understand cloud-native security principles (least privilege, zero trust, segmentation), IAM controls, and practical architectural trade-offs between usability, performance, and security. ## Even Better * **Fintech or Insurtech background:** You bring direct experience working in growth-stage Fintech or Insurtech companies. * **IPO experience:** You have previously guided a security function through the process of a company going public. * **Framework expertise:** You possess deep familiarity and hands-on experience with frameworks and regulations such as NIST, CIS, SOX, SOC2, PCI, and CCPA/CPRA. * **DevSecOps exposure:** You are familiar with infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible) and embedding security automated controls into deployment pipelines. ## Where This role will be based in the US. ## Compensation A little about our pay philosophy: We take pride in compensating our employees fairly and equitably. We are showcasing a range of your potential base salary based on the roles location. The successful candidate's starting pay will also be determined based on job-related qualifications, internal compensation, candidate location and budget. This range may be modified in the future. * **Salary Range:** $240,000 - $300,000 USD. Employees are also eligible for an annual performance-based bonus and equity.