Project Manager (Large-Scale Solutions)

The opportunity: #

Cossack Labs is looking for an experienced Project Manager to join Solutions team. The Solutions team handles mission-critical, multi-app, multi-platform distributed systems, addressing serious threats in the world around us. The solutions are a mix of software and hardware, cloud and on-prem.

This role is challenging in terms of delivering results because mission-critical projects demand the ability to navigate complex and dynamic environments. It represents a high managerial position in the company hierarchy with responsibility for the outcome. If you are interested in working on mission-critical projects with high social and real-world impact, this role might be suitable for you.

We are a data security solutions company, developing software products (open-source and proprietary), as well as providing custom bespoke solutions to innovative development teams around the world. Our mission is to make strong security methodologies and approaches convenient within modern infrastructures and, as the software is eating the world, help it eat the world responsibly, without leaking customer’s data.

We work in the B2B space, with customers such as power grid operators, payment processors, legal companies, million-user customer applications. We cater to young ambitious startups and well-established enterprises, who use our software and solutions as core part of their security arsenal. Our customers are smart, but extremely demanding.

Markets: EU, UK, USA.

You will: #

• Process product/solution ideas, features, and tasks before they enter the development phase.
• Collaborate with management, technical leads, and teams to create development/delivery plans. Draw necessary expertise from other teams during the project requirements phase.
• Synchronise teams and organise processes. Most of our solution work is carried out by small teams, which need to be coordinated with their leads, heads of practice, and other team members.
• Ownership of the delivery process, including designing the workflow, implementing, and continuously improving it.
• Understand the development team’s state and help team leads improve it if necessary.
• Lead towards project outcomes: populate releases with tasks necessary for implementation according to the defined requirements and approved plans.
• Identify and synchronise changes in requirements and update release plans accordingly.
• Establish a metrics measurement and reporting system for delivery progress/quality to the management team.
• Manage the solution knowledge base for the project. Maintain relationships with internal and external customers.

We would expect you to have: #

• Proven 5+ years of experience as a Delivery/Project Manager in large, complex projects.
• Technical background in software engineering beyond web development: telco, hardware, IoT, industrial automation, manufacturing.
• Expertise in planning, designing, and scaling large initiatives.
• Expertise in managing cross-functional teams, co-managing them based on project needs, in collaboration with the project’s technical lead.
• Experience working with product teams and in a startup environment.
• Attention to detail and focus on quality.
• Extreme ownership and diligence.
• Deep understanding of classic project management methodologies (PMBOK).
• Upper-intermediate level of English proficiency, both written and spoken.

As a plus you’d have: #

• Understanding of information security, IoT and hardware, systems engineering, infrastructure, etc.
• Understanding of how large distributed systems are built or how they work. Think power plant control systems.
• Desire to work on extremely innovative projects and minimise chances for chaos ahead of time.
• Experience working in a multicultural context.

Please note that you can be a perfect fit even if not everything we’ve outlined above applies to you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask – everyone is unique.

We offer: #

Unique area of expertise: #

• Interesting and challenging work in applied security engineering with our teams: building and protecting mission-critical systems, creating custom hardware for specific security purposes, building and breaking cryptographic protocols.
• Sharing your work as blogs posts, research papers and conference talks. We work with innovative companies all over the world, move quickly and dive into technologies others just hear about.
• Combining technologies: cryptography, software engineering, information security. You won’t be bored :)
• A sense of meaning and responsibility for those who seek purpose — we’re building “invisible texture of modern civilization” — bits of infrastructure finance, power grids, healthcare rely on, and we are trusted with very challenging aspects of it.

Environment: #

• Friendly and experienced team: smart people to learn from, great people to build with. Each of us is unique, we value and support each other.
• An atmosphere that motivates you to grow and get smarter every month, a healthy ratio of routine / experimentation.
• Trust: schedule, reporting, bureaucracy is kept at reasonable minimum. We hire smart people and trust them to do the right thing. When things go wrong, we help rather than punish.
• Shared decision making: this business is driven by engineering excellence, so engineers are important part of tactical and strategical business decisions.
• Friendly to humans: not just a formal vacation and sick leave quota. Feel like your mental or physical wellbeing needs care? Take some time off. Feel like working a few days from home? Sure. As long as you’re in line, we are here to support you when you’re not.

Growth: #

• Team that facilitates internal learning and growth all the time.
• Interesting technologies to work with — sometimes, even unique ones (we design applied cryptography schemes and techniques and novel ways to use them).
• Management attention to help you improve upon your personal goals (through 1:1s and mentoring).

Benefits: #

• Competitive compensation with flexible bonus scheme.
• Sick leaves, 21 business days for vacation per year, extra days off — according to the agreements and laws.
• Conferences, books, courses — we encourage learning and sharing with the community. Our team members share a lot in talks, workshops and blog posts.

Not sure but considering? Talk to us. #

If you see yourself fit but a few things are off — don’t hesitate to talk anyway. It might be that your unique combination of skills and knowledge would be perfectly fitting for our environment, but we both just don’t know it yet.

Why work at Cossack Labs? #

Some companies prioritise talent and value proposition, while others understand business and would take any job that pays well. However, only few companies choose to specialise in difficult tasks as their primary competency.

We take on difficult jobs, we take mission-critical software and make it mission-secure.

• Virtualise OT infrastructure securely in the presence of active adversaries, preventing them from accessing the susceptible nation-wide network? ✓ Check.
• Provide immediate application security and infrastructure security guidance for mission-critical application that will be deployed on thousands of devices on the front-line tomorrow? ✓ Check.
• Validate counter-reverse engineering protections for power grid hardware to ensure that previously air-gapped environments were safe to open up to the outside world? ✓ Check.
• Ensure that software platforms for exchange of sensitive documents actually have a top-tier SSDLC programme that supplements missing capabilities and builds out processes? ✓ Check.

We operate as a lean core team and a diverse network of experts. The finest people you may work with include PhDs in information security and cryptography, infosec community standard contributors, in-depth experts in rare security topics, and business-centric security engineers with broad experiences. Some of your teammates have worked in infosec since the 1990s and saw the industry grow from nothing. Some of them helped write standards that govern security around you. Maybe someone’s work actually keeps the lights up while you’re reading this?

Our core engineers go through extensive indoctrination and training to become disciplined, stringent, self-sufficient field unit who owns the outcomes rather than just showing up for work.

As you grow into the Cossack Labs engineer, you’ll work on slow-paced projects to learn and improve, internal projects to innovate and build tools, and of course a few fires, because no smooth sea can make a skilled sailor. You’ll discover what works for you and what you need to learn.

We help innovators who are launching new venues of civilisation while facing significant security risks in becoming more secure and resilient. Customers trust us to achieve their business goals, not merely address gaps someone else has to identify first.

If this is a challenge you’re up to, let's talk!