VP, Information Security

Algolia is a leading AI Search platform, serving more than 18,000 customers in more than 150 countries, in 80 languages. Today, Algolia powers almost 2 Trillion searches a year – that’s four times more than Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Baidu and Yandex combined! Our amazing technology is used by one in eight online users. Our largest use case, and install base, is Product Discovery for retailers; after that it’s Media & Entertainment, other SaaS companies, and then a long tail of customers in many different sectors.

We serve SMB, Mid-Market, and Enterprise segments, with the Enterprise segment representing over 70% of our revenue today. Even some of our SMB customers have enterprise requirements like speed and resiliency given the mission critical role search plays in online retail in particular. As we scale toward our vision to lead in AI-powered product discovery, enterprise readiness, and platform extensibility, the security and trust of our customers, partners, and internal teams is paramount.

To meet this need, we are hiring a Vice President, Information Security to join the Executive Leadership Team, reporting directly to the CEO. This is a new and critical role that will define and lead Algolia’s global security strategy, champion a proactive security culture, and ensure we stay ahead of evolving threats across our systems, operations, and products.

YOUR ROLE WILL CONSIST OF:

• Serve as Algolia’s most senior authority on information security and cyber risk, owning the vision, strategy, execution, and continuous improvement of our company-wide security program.
• Advise the CEO and Executive Leadership Team (ELT) directly, translating complex technical risks into pragmatic, clear business impacts and choices, and communicating candidly in both routine and high-pressure situations.
• Partner across Engineering, Product, Legal, IT, and GTM leadership to design, implement, and enforce policies, controls, and procedures that safeguard our infrastructure, data, and applications. Your ability to collaboratively reach sustainable results through collaborative planning with technical and non-technical leaders and individual contributors across all functions is essential to the success of this position, and of Algolia.
• Enable business growth through security by informing the ELT in plain English business terms to help them appreciate risk decisions, and crafting well-engineered, pragmatic, business-first, risk-informed solutions that enable Algolia to take bold, well-managed risks that the ELT understands. Where others might default to “no,” you collaboratively design and implement compensating controls that unlock opportunity to maximize the business value we derive from the technologies we build, and those we buy.
• Lead incident response and resilience, ensuring Algolia is prepared for and can withstand cyber threats, data breaches, and systemic risks across the business, and build the program governing how our responses will provide lessons that help us reduce the frequency and impact of future incidents. Algolia’s structure requires that technical and non-technical teams all understand and are able to meaningfully participate in incident response, and the VP of Information Security plays a critical coordination and consultative role.
• Inculcate and embed a security-first mindset across the company, working with the CEO, CTO, CPO, and the rest of the ELT to instill proactive, pragmatic, business-first risk awareness into product architecture, development practices, go-to-market, customer onboarding and lifecycle, and internal operations.
• Shape and lead the security posture of AI initiatives by establishing clear, adaptable processes to assess threats, model risk, ensure policy alignment, and enable executives to make informed, high-confidence, business-transformative decisions around AI adoption. The VP of Information Security will partner with the Executive Leadership Team to enable them to move faster and further with AI by clearly defining acceptable risk, the minimum viable data required to deliver business value, and the potential blast radius if that data were exposed through an AI-tool or supply-chain compromise; design and enforce security-led data-minimisation and integration strategies; and implement monitoring and countermeasures to detect and respond to supply-chain and platform compromise.
• Recruit, inspire, and lead a globally distributed security organisation, better geographically distributing net-new and backfill positions with US East-Coast hires to provide more effective support to US and Australian team members, including information security engineers, security software engineers, and information security compliance specialists, all while fostering continuous growth and career development and an aggressive policy to support inter-team collaboration and cooperation.
• Lead continuous improvement programs for the Information Security organisation’s training, skills development, and career progression, ensuring the team grows alongside emerging threats and technologies. Invest in both internal development and external engagement, positioning Algolia as a place where security leaders build their careers. Beyond training and conference participation, the VP of Information Security will sponsor and host local security forums that connect Algolia’s team with industry peers to promote intelligence sharing and collaboration.
• Represent Algolia externally with enterprise customers, regulators, auditors, industry groups, and at conferences - establishing trust and demonstrating our commitment to enterprise-grade security and compliance.
• Create force multipliers by establishing objective, well-shared security data, intelligence, and knowledge that accelerate detection, response, and executive decision-making. Drive automation that gathers and correlates high-signal telemetry through and expanding upon Algolia’s Logging Pipeline to deliver SIEM-powered visibility and observability across the environment. This includes advancing platforms such as CrowdStrike Next Generation SIEM and Obsidian Security for SaaS monitoring; strengthening centralised logging and single-source-of-truth initiatives with correlated configuration data from systems such as Vanta, Jamf, and Intune; and continuously refining a focused, high-quality threat intelligence capability built on MISP and selected external feeds.
• Define and deliver measurable success by ensuring that within the first year, Algolia demonstrates clear improvements in resilience, embeds AI risk management frameworks, and strengthens customer trust in our security posture.
  
  

YOU MIGHT BE A FIT IF YOU HAVE:

• A blunt, clear, and high-integrity communication style and board-level communication skills; the ability to translate complex technical issues into business risk clearly and persuasively, to speak truth to power and rally stakeholders in urgent situations.
• A strong track record of building and scaling security programs in high-growth, cloud-native tech environments ($50-200M+ ARR).
• Experience leading security in multi-cloud-native, SaaS, or API-first environments, and in data centres.
• A leadership style that emphasises accountability, risk prevention and mitigation, and long-term resilience, you combine deep technical excellence with pragmatic business judgment to give senior executives clearly defined choices.
• Proven track record of building security culture across engineering, product, sales, and finance teams.
• Strong knowledge of DevSecOps practices, secure software development, and modern CI/CD pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with incident response and crisis management in global settings.
• Vision for AI governance and ethical risk management, beyond just technical security.
• Familiarity with threat modeling for AI systems (prompt injection, model poisoning, data leakage).
• Experience building security culture in engineering-heavy organisations (developer-first security).
• Experience supporting international teams and operations across multiple regions, and the cultural requirements of these operations.
• Experience leading Security teams across disciplines: application security, infrastructure, incident response, compliance, business-continuity, and secure software development lifecycle management.
• A strong background in data privacy and compliance frameworks (e.g., GDPR, SOC2, ISO 27001, C5).
• The ability to lead through ambiguity and scale processes for a global, remote-first organisation.
• Engagement in security communities, open-source contributions, or standards bodies.
• A collaborative, mission-driven mindset aligned with Algolia’s values of Grit, Trust, Candor, Care, and Humility.
  
  

NICE TO HAVE:

• Familiarity with search infrastructure, distributed systems, or high-scale platforms.
• Exposure to regulatory engagement and shaping security programs to meet evolving global standards.
• Multilingual, preferably French, Romanian.
• Strong external presence. e.g., public speaking, industry participation, or community contributions.
• Experience interfacing directly with large enterprise customers or regulators.
• Experience reporting to a CEO.