Team Lead, Application Security

📋 Job Overview

Forward Financing is a financial technology company based in Boston, Massachusetts with team members throughout the United States, Dominican Republic, and Canada. The company is on a mission to unlock the capital that fuels small businesses across America. Recognized as a Best Place to Work by Built In Boston and certified as a Great Place To Work®, Forward is investing in its employees, technology, and customer experience – with long-term success in mind every step of the way.

🏢 About Forward Financing

As the Team Lead, Application Security, you'll take the reins of Forward's application and product security program at a pivotal moment, as we scale our use of AI to build software faster than ever. You'll lead a team of senior engineers, modernize how we pentest and remediate vulnerabilities, and make sure security keeps pace with an engineering organization that increasingly builds with, and builds, AI agents.

🎯 The Role

In this role you will:

• Lead application and product security across Forward-built, third-party, and AI-built software.
• Evolve the pentest program: aggressively security-test and remediate existing software, then continuously test net-new agents and the software agents create.
• Proactively build and integrate AI solutions within the appsec function.
• Own remediation workflows and vulnerability management with Engineering, including pre-production vs. post-production gap analysis.
• Partner with other teams to build controls to contain external exposure: network allowlists, egress proxy, and proxy-level DLP.
• Support the test-to-production review process so AI-built work is security-reviewed before promotion.
• Grow and develop a team of senior engineers; set quality and coverage standards for offensive testing.
• Build and maintain security services within the Forward application stack.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Lead application and product security across Forward-built, third-party, and AI-built software.
• Evolve the pentest program: aggressively security-test and remediate existing software, then continuously test net-new agents and the software agents create.
• Proactively build and integrate AI solutions within the appsec function.
• Own remediation workflows and vulnerability management with Engineering, including pre-production vs. post-production gap analysis.
• Partner with other teams to build controls to contain external exposure: network allowlists, egress proxy, and proxy-level DLP.
• Support the test-to-production review process so AI-built work is security-reviewed before promotion.
• Grow and develop a team of senior engineers; set quality and coverage standards for offensive testing.
• Build and maintain security services within the Forward application stack.

📌 Required Qualifications

• Typically has 7 or more years in application security, offensive security, or product security, including team leadership.
• Hands-on pentesting and code-review depth across web applications, APIs, and cloud infrastructure (AWS).
• Experience building or scaling a security testing program — scoping, tooling, cadence, and remediation SLAs.
• Understanding of AI/LLM attack surface: prompt injection, insecure agent tool use, and vulnerabilities characteristic of AI-generated code.
• Experience with modern programming languages such as Ruby, Python, or Go, and with secure SDLC practices.
• Ability to communicate risk and priorities crisply to engineers and executives.
• Typically has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or equivalent technical degree, or equivalent industry experience.

⭐ Desirable Experience

• Experience pentesting or red-teaming LLM applications and agentic systems.
• OSCP/OSWE or comparable offensive certifications.
• Experience running bug-bounty or external testing programs.
• Background in fintech or other regulated environments.

🎁 Benefits

Annual Targeted Salary: $175,000– $200,000 USD
Annual Target Bonus: 12%

Additionally, we offer a comprehensive total rewards package, including but not limited to: medical, dental, vision, commuter benefits, a flexible time-off policy, paid parental leave, 401k match for US employees, wellness reimbursement, volunteering days, annual professional development budget, and charitable donation match.

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

Forward is proud to be a remote-first company, keeping workplace flexibility a top priority for our employees. As a business, we are focused on impact; we are more concerned with your contributions to the success of the company than where you get your work done.