Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) - Security Leadership & Architecture

About Ethos: Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company dedicated to democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. Their platform eliminates traditional barriers, offering instant, accessible products with no medical exams—redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.

About the Role: Ethos is seeking a Deputy CISO with 12+ years of experience in security engineering, architecture, or technical security leadership. This role reports directly to the CISO, acting as a technical leader and escalation point for the security organization. Ideal candidates have built and defended real systems, bringing hands-on technical credibility to a senior security leadership position.

Duties and Responsibilities

Security Leadership & Strategy:

• Partner with the CISO to define and execute the security strategy, roadmap, and priorities across the organization.
• Act as a deputy and escalation point for the CISO, representing security leadership in their absence, including with executives and the board.
• Provide leadership and oversight across the security organization, empowering team leads while ensuring technical direction.
• Build, mentor, and lead security engineers and architects, raising the technical bar across the function.
• Own security budget planning, vendor/tool evaluation, and resourcing decisions in partnership with the CISO.

Technical Architecture & Engineering Oversight:

• Provide hands-on technical review of security architecture across cloud platforms, applications, APIs, and infrastructure.
• Lead threat modeling and architecture reviews for major systems and new initiatives, engaging with engineering and platform teams.
• Drive secure-by-design practices into the SDLC and CI/CD pipelines, collaborating with DevOps and engineering leadership.
• Personally lead or oversee response to major security incidents, including technical root-cause analysis and remediation planning.
• Stay current with the threat landscape, offensive security techniques, and emerging technologies (including AI/ML systems), translating knowledge into concrete technical controls.

Cross-Functional Partnership:

• Ensure security priorities and policies are grounded in sound technical judgment, collaborating with all parts of the security organization.
• Communicate technical risk clearly to non-technical stakeholders and executive leadership.
• Represent the security function credibly in cross-functional forums, backed by hands-on technical expertise.

Qualifications and Skills:

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in security engineering, security architecture, or technical security leadership roles, with a track record of hands-on technical work.
• Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Deep, hands-on expertise in cloud security architecture (AWS), including infrastructure-as-code.
• Strong background in application security, secure software development, and modern architecture patterns (microservices, containers, APIs, zero-trust).
• Proven ability to read and evaluate system architecture and code at a technical level, engaging credibly with senior engineers.
• Experience leading technical incident response, including root cause analysis for complex, multi-system incidents.
• Demonstrated experience building and leading technical security teams.
• Strong communication skills, translating deep technical risk into business terms for executives and the board.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience as a CISO, Deputy CISO, or Head of Security Engineering at a comparable organization.
• CISSP certification.
• Experience with AI/ML security, including familiarity with OWASP LLM Top 10, MITRE ATLAS, or NIST AI RMF.
• Experience operating in regulated industries (fintech, healthcare, SaaS at scale).