---
title: 'Director of Forward Deployed Engineering at TENEX.AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-forward-deployed-engineering-tenex-ai-qymr6qpgxw07'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Director of Forward Deployed Engineering at TENEX.AI

- **Company:** TENEX.AI
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-07-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tenex/b2501a2a-4a55-40ff-b08c-430d76fbaa53

## Job description

## COMPANY OVERVIEW

TENEX is an AI-native, automation-first, built-for-scale Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider. We combine cutting-edge AI with human expertise to deliver security operations that are better, faster, and more cost-effective than traditional approaches.

We're a fast-growing startup backed by industry experts and top-tier investors led by Crosspoint Capital. Our team is mission-driven, customer-obsessed, and building something that matters — a new standard for how security operations should work.

Culture is one of the most important things at TENEX.AI http://TENEX.AI — explore our culture deck at culture.tenex.ai http://culture.tenex.ai to witness how we embody our values every day.

This role is perfect for those already in the Scottsdale, AZ, Sarasota, FL or Kansas City, MO metro area, or eager to join us. Immerse yourself in a high-performance environment built on integrity, innovation, and a relentless drive to protect our customers.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

TENEX.AI http://TENEX.AI is the AI-native, human-led MDR provider. This Director owns the foundational delivery of our MDR service: how we build, deploy, manage, and integrate the platforms our service runs on: Google SecOps, Microsoft Sentinel, and the Tenex Platform. The mandate is time-to-protection and repeatable, high-quality multi-SIEM delivery at scale, standing platforms up cleanly, wiring in the customer's data and tooling, operationalizing detection content and context, and keeping it all running well across the portfolio.

This is an engineering leadership role, not an advisory or product-building one. The team implements and manages the platforms and works closely with the teams that deliver advisory engagements and develop agentic use cases; deploying and integrating what they produce and relaying field context back to them.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Own time-to-protection across our supported platforms — the speed and repeatability of standing up Google SecOps, Microsoft Sentinel, and the Tenex Platform in customer environments for example.
- Lead multi-SIEM engineering — build, deploy, and manage pipelines, parsers, detections, playbooks and other configuration across Google SecOps, Microsoft Sentinel, and the Tenex Platform.
- Own integrations — data-source onboarding, connector/API work, and normalization that wire the customer's environment and security tooling into the SIEMs and the Tenex Platform; build integration patterns that get reused, not rebuilt.
- Own context engineering — the data mappings, entity resolution, tuning, and environment knowledge that make the platforms actually perform per customer.
- Own ongoing platform management — health, optimization, and lifecycle of deployed platforms across the book of business.
- Build the repeatable delivery machine — playbooks, intake, quality gates, and a capacity model that let the team scale against pipeline instead of heroics.
- Lead and scale the team — hire, coach, and develop the engineers responsible for platform implementation, content, and integration; manage capacity against the customer pipeline; own delivery quality, SLOs, and OKRs.
- Run the cross-team interfaces — partner with customer success, product management, threat intelligence, and cyber defense across the delivery lifecycle, and maintain clean support/relay channels with the advisory and agentic engineering functions.

## WHAT YOU BRING

Must-have

- 8+ years in security engineering, security operations, or detection engineering, with 3+ years managing engineers (ideally managing leads/managers).
- Hands-on depth across both major SIEMs: Google SecOps (Chronicle — ingestion, parsers/CBN, YARA-L, entity graph) and Microsoft Sentinel (KQL, analytics rules, data connectors, Log Analytics) — or deep in one and strongly credible in the other, with clear ability to lead both.
- Integration engineering — data-source onboarding, connector/API development, and normalization across platforms.
- Demonstrated track record building repeatable delivery at scale — playbooks, quality gates, capacity planning — not just running individual projects.
- Strong customer-facing communication; can own a delivery relationship with a customer security team.
- Comfort with multi-tenant delivery and content-as-code / CI/CD workflows.

Nice-to-have

- SOAR / automation (Chronicle SOAR, Sentinel automation rules & playbooks).
- Pipeline and telemetry tooling (Bindplane, Logstash, or equivalent).
- Terraform / IaC for repeatable environment standup.
- Prior MSSP / MDR / managed security services experience.
- Experience operating alongside agentic and advisory functions without absorbing their scope.

## WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

- 90-day: Multi-SIEM delivery playbooks and quality gates in place. Time-to-protection baseline measured across SecOps and Sentinel deployments. Team capacity model built against pipeline. Support/relay interfaces with the advisory and agentic engineering functions defined and agreed.
- 6-month: Measurable reduction in time-to-protection across both SIEMs. Integration patterns reused rather than rebuilt. Ongoing platform management running to a defined health/optimization cadence. Team staffed to plan.
- 12-month: A repeatable, metric-driven multi-platform delivery machine that scales sub-linearly to customer growth. Managed platforms healthy across the book. The "we support, they own" interfaces to the advisory and agentic engineering functions running smoothly, with no scope drift in either direction.

## EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
- Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, GIAC certifications, Google Cloud Professional, Microsoft SC-200/AZ-500, or AWS Certified Solutions Architect are a plus

WHY JOIN US?

- Opportunity to work with cutting-edge AI-driven cybersecurity technologies and next-generation security platforms
- Collaborate with a talented and innovative team focused on continuously improving security operations
- Competitive salary and benefits package
- A culture of growth and development, with opportunities to expand your expertise in AI, cybersecurity, and engineering
- Be part of building something new — TENEX's Forward Deployed Engineering organization is a greenfield opportunity to define how enterprise security is delivered at scale

## About TENEX.AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: TENEX.AI is the first AI-native, human-led Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider, built from the ground up to deliver 10x faster threat detection and response.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B, $277M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Sarasota, FL, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Eric Foster (CEO), Venkata Koppaka (Co-Founder & CTO), Jan Grzymala-Busse (CISO & Head of Security Operations), Elias “Lou” Manousos (Chairman), Ryan Shreve (Co-Founder & CRO), Edwin Solis (Co-Founder & CFO/COO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Cybersecurity – Managed Detection and Response (MDR), threat intelligence, security automation, and incident response.
- **Target customers**: Mid-market to global enterprises (B2B), also SMBs with flexible pricing.
- **Mission**: “Deliver 10x better security outcomes, faster and more cost-effectively than legacy providers.”

## Products & Services
- **AI-Native MDR (Managed Detection & Response)**: Core service that uses domain-specific AI to triage every alert in under a minute, then empowers human analysts to investigate and respond. Includes 24/7 U.S.-based analysts with 8+ years average experience.  
- **Essential AI-Native MDR**: A standardized, lower-cost tier for smaller organizations (pricing from $99,000/year).  
- **Bespoke MDR**: Customized service for complex, mission-critical environments with dedicated engineering team, flexible contract, and quarterly executive briefings.  
- **Google Cloud Security Operations**: Implementation, management, and optimization of Google Security Operations platform (TENEX is a leading Google Cloud partner).  
- **Platform Training & Education**: Customer training on the TENEX platform and security operations best practices.  
- **Dashboards & Reports**: Continuous visibility and reporting for security posture.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Total Funding**: $277M across three rounds:  
  - Seed (Jan 2025): Led by **Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)**  
  - Series A (Oct 2025): $27M led by **Crosspoint Capital Partners**  
  - Series B (Mar 2026): $250M led by **Crosspoint Capital Partners** (also a16z, Shield Capital participated)
- **Key Metric**: 505.9% year-over-year headcount growth (74 employees as of early 2026); 108 active job postings.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Crosspoint Capital Partners, Shield Capital; Google Cloud (strategic partner).
- **Growth Signals**: Scaling from 1 to 3 offices (Sarasota, Overland Park, San Jose); rapid hiring across engineering, sales, and threat detection; leadership team includes former Google Security executives and founders of RiskIQ and Cyderes.

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-native architecture**: Built from the ground up for AI, not retrofitted. Domain-specific models understand attacker behavior, not just patterns.
- **Human-led, AI-powered**: AI handles 100% of alerts at machine speed; human experts focus on complex threats. 95% fewer false positives, <1-minute mean time to triage (MTTX).
- **Elite founding team**: Veterans from Google Cloud Security (original Chronicle team), RiskIQ, Cyderes, Fishtech Group, and national security.
- **Deep Google Cloud expertise**: TENEX is the go-to partner for Google Security Operations, managing over 75% of Google’s security business at peak.
- **Flexible, scalable pricing**: From $99K/year Essential tier to fully bespoke enterprise solutions, making premium MDR accessible to a wide range of budgets.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale through AI, not headcount**: Use automation to multiply analyst efficiency rather than linearly adding people.
- **In-person collaboration**: All three offices are on-site-first; the company believes “bold innovations emerge from in-person collaboration.”
- **Continuous learning and adaptation**: The AI platform learns from every environment and analyst feedback, staying ahead of emerging threats.
- **Expansion into mid-market**: The Essential tier targets smaller organizations that previously couldn’t afford premium MDR.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “AI-native, human-led” – the company values elite human expertise alongside advanced AI. “We’re AI-native, born AI, built AI, think AI, and actively searching for the best human minds in cybersecurity.”
- **Work model**: On-site-first in three locations: Sarasota, FL (HQ); Overland Park, KS; San Jose, CA. Aggressive relocation packages including moving expense reimbursement, temporary housing, family transition support.
- **Benefits**: Comprehensive health (Medical, Dental, Vision); 100% 401k match up to 6%; long-term incentives; professional development opportunities; continuous learning culture.
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapidly scaling (505% YoY headcount growth) with 108 open positions across engineering, product, sales, and security operations. Opportunity to shape the future of AI-driven security.
- **Team**: 72% of employees in the US, with a strong technical base (39% in technical roles). Executives hail from Google, Microsoft, Cyderes, ReliaQuest, and other top security firms.

## Sources
1. [tenex.ai](https://tenex.ai/)  
2. [tenex.ai/about-us](https://tenex.ai/about-us/)  
3. [linkedin.com/company/tenex-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tenex-ai)  
4. [tenex.ai/careers](https://tenex.ai/careers/)  
5. [tenex.ai/careers/open-positions](https://tenex.ai/careers/open-positions/)

## Other roles at TENEX.AI

- [Principal DevOps Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-devops-engineer-tenex-ai-san-jose-e84nhzbq37sk) — San Jose, CA
- [Administrative Assistant](https://feeny.ai/job/administrative-assistant-tenex-ai-scottsdale-zd8gnayx6tnz) — Scottsdale, AZ
- [Head of Communications, Public Relations & Analyst Relations Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-communications-public-relations-analyst-relations-marketing-tenex-ai-qzvry73dx1x1) — United States
- [Senior Technical Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-program-manager-tenex-ai-united-states-1nc6s4kfnkqk) — United States
- [Manager, Customer Success Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/manager-customer-success-operations-tenex-ai-sarasota-h1hw76n8ts8g) — Sarasota, FL
- [Inside Sales Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/inside-sales-manager-tenex-ai-y2ebcbx44eh1)
- [Inside Sales Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/inside-sales-representative-tenex-ai-feha6menq4ge)
- [Sales Operations Associate-EMEA](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-operations-associate-emea-tenex-ai-united-kingdom-fbbbrxfvbx2y) — United Kingdom
- [Senior Security Researcher](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-security-researcher-tenex-ai-scottsdale-pe346ejjqpej) — Scottsdale, AZ
- [Senior Security Engineer - IAM](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-security-engineer-iam-tenex-ai-kansas-city-wtyvgd5m5m07) — Kansas City, MO