Sr. Engineering Manager, Application Security

About Betterment

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing, savings and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission, to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease.  We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (four days/ week in-office, with no required office days during the summer and winter holidays).

About the Role:

As a Senior Engineering Manager leading the Betterment Security team’s Application Security squad, you’ll collaborate closely with engineering teams across the company as your squad helps developers build secure software by default. Your team shapes how Betterment threat models new systems, reviews designs, manages vulnerabilities, and equips engineers with the tools, libraries, and guardrails that make the secure path the easy path.

You’ll work with team and company leadership to develop and drive a mission-aligned roadmap and manage its execution with your team. You’ll also partner with engineers on your team and beyond to identify and advocate for the work that will most meaningfully reduce risk to Betterment and our customers. You’ll play a crucial role in balancing proactive security investments alongside response and remediation, all while helping mentor and grow a team of amazing engineers.

At Betterment, security is foundational to the trust our customers place in us with their financial lives. Our Application Security squad empowers and enables the entire engineering organization and works closely with product and platform teams to deliver controls, tooling, and partnerships that let us deliver value to Betterment’s customers and clients without compromising on safety. Members of this team have a love for solving interesting security challenges and improving the lives of our developers in ways that move our engineering organization and the business forward. You’ll be a part of a team that’s tackling difficult questions of secure design at scale in a deeply regulated industry where the stakes are real.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees. 

• New York City: $210,000-250,000

This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus. 

A Day in the Life:

• Oversee the development of paved roads, libraries, and guardrails that make it easier for our developers to commit, test, build, deploy, and operate code securely by default.
• Build and maintain the threat modeling, design review, and vulnerability management programs that protect our customers, our employees, and the business.
• Drive the adoption of AI across AppSec operations to achieve scaled security workflows, creating leverage for senior engineers.
• Lead and mentor engineers on Betterment’s senior-leaning AppSec squad.
• Establish strong lines of communication with stakeholders across engineering, product, legal, compliance, and risk to understand and deeply support the needs of teams building products across all business lines and divisions of Betterment.
• Inspire and maintain a strong, equitable engineering culture founded on transparency, inclusivity, mentorship, and collaboration.
• Continuously innovate and seek out ways to meet the near- and long-term strategic security needs of our complex org.

What We’re Looking For:

• Expertise across the application security stack: secure SDLC, threat modeling, secure design review, code review, vulnerability management, and the cloud-native ecosystem (AWS, containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD).
• Experience with hands-on managing, mentoring, and inspiring a team of talented security engineers, including senior engineers. Demonstrated success as a true player-coach is a must.
• Experience establishing or scaling a Security Champions or distributed threat modeling program, with a focus on empowering engineering squads to own security outcomes and integrating these practices into the existing software development lifecycle.
• Experience leading execution of large team initiatives and execution of smaller concurrent projects in partnership with senior engineers.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted security tools and a curiosity for exploring how AI can enhance both security workflows and the security posture of the AI-powered features our engineers are building.
• A real passion for application security and for empowering developers to do the right thing easily.
• Experience collaborating with other engineering teams, product managers, subject matter experts, and non-technical stakeholders such as legal, compliance, and risk.