Head of Security

About the Role: NEAR is one of the most active ecosystems in crypto. We are seeking a Head of Security to pragmatically manage hard security risks across companies operating complex financial instruments in adversarial cross-chain environments. You will have primary ownership of Defuse Labs (NEAR Intents) and NEAR One, protecting against state actors, insider threats, and LLM agents.

What You'll Do

• Define and operate security across NEAR Intents and NEAR One, including identity, cloud, endpoints, application security, and SecOps.
• Establish security standards, audit strategy, and release gating for smart contracts and production deployments.
• Lead ecosystem-wide incident response across traditional infrastructure and on-chain events.
• Design key management architecture across protocol, treasury, and operational environments (MPC, custody models).
• Define and run a continuous testing strategy, including internal testing, external audits, and bug bounties.

What You Bring

• Proven security leadership from a major on-chain protocol, top-tier exchange, or critical infrastructure.
• Deep technical expertise (Terraform, threat modeling, system design) and ability to challenge engineers on merits.
• Fluency in crypto risk, including smart contracts, on-chain forensics, MPC, key management, and validator security.
• Experience with AI and emerging surfaces (model integrity, prompt injection risks).
• Strong communication skills, composed in public for incident disclosures and partner calls.

Benefits

• Opportunity to build and lead a lean, high-leverage security function from the ground up.
• Direct mandate from the NEAR Security Committee with real authority over security.
• Fully remote work flexibility (Global).