Head of Infrastructure & Security

Albert helps chemists change the world by building technology that understands how they work. As chemists ourselves, we know what it’s like when software doesn’t work the way you do — stuck with systems built by people who never spent a day at the bench. That’s why we created Albert OS, the first AI-native operating system for materials science, designed to remove every obstacle between curiosity and discovery.

We’re looking for a technically strong and strategically minded Head of Infrastructure & Security to build and own the global infrastructure, reliability, and security function at Albert. This role, with a focus on establishing an enterprise-grade infrastructure and security posture that scales with Albert’s growth, will sit at the intersection of cloud architecture, site reliability engineering, and enterprise security — reporting directly to the VP of Engineering and shaping the foundation on which Albert scales. 

If you are passionate about cutting-edge technology and thrive in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment, we want to hear from you.

What you'll do

Strategy & Delivery

• Define and enforce a coherent cloud architecture strategy across all engineering teams — common IaC tooling, unified monitoring, and consistent best practices.
• Own cloud cost strategy in partnership with Finance: drive per-unit cost metrics, implement team-level budget visibility and alerting, and deliver leadership-facing dashboards on infrastructure efficiency.
• Own Albert’s security posture end-to-end: library and server patching, SAST/DAST pipeline, WAF, SIEM, EDR, IDS/IPS, and data loss prevention.
• Implement and evolve a Zero Trust architecture across cloud and identity layers.
• Lead compliance and audit readiness for enterprise partners — GxP obligations, SOC 2, and a path toward ITAR and FedRAMP.
• Own Azure interoperability strategy to meet the integration requirements of our enterprise partner base.
• Own the ML/AI infrastructure platform so the data science team has a reliable, well-operated backend without having to own it themselves.
• Drive infrastructure modernization: identity provider decoupling, CI/CD pipeline standardization, and internal developer platform improvements that increase engineering velocity.

Execution & Collaboration

• Build and lead a global SRE organization on a follow-the-sun model — existing India team, planned EU team (Germany-anchored), and US presence.
• Define and own the SLO framework, error budget model, and service tiering classification across Albert’s platform.
• Establish incident response, escalation paths, post-mortem process, and disaster recovery and business continuity programs.
• Drive reduction in preventable incidents and MTTR; build the runbooks, observability standards, and on-call practices that make 24/7 coverage sustainable.
• Manage vendor relationships and negotiate contracts for cloud services, security tooling, and infrastructure software.
• Manage the third-party security partnership for penetration testing and compliance advisory; ensure findings are actioned, not filed.
• Develop and deliver cybersecurity awareness and training programs across the organization.
• Respond to enterprise security questionnaires and audits with structured, defensible answers — and close the gaps they surface.

Leadership & Impact

• Build the infrastructure and security function from an early-stage posture into an enterprise-grade one — this is a program-building role, not a program-inheriting one.
• Operate as a company-level leader: connect infrastructure decisions to business outcomes and communicate clearly across functions and seniority levels.
• Work through regional SRE directors and partner teams to execute without creating bottlenecks.
• Leverage AI tooling aggressively to maximize team leverage — and set the expectation that the team does the same.
• Define reliability KPIs by region and hold regional SRE leaders accountable to them.

You will have

• 8+ years in cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, or site reliability engineering, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role owning a team or function.
• Deep AWS expertise; meaningful Azure exposure required given our enterprise partner profile.
• Kubernetes at architectural depth — decision-making, not just operations.
• Demonstrated experience designing SLO frameworks, error budgets, and service reliability programs.
• Demonstrated experience building or managing global, distributed engineering teams operating across time zones.
• Strong security fundamentals: cloud security architecture, IAM, Zero Trust, network segmentation, SAST/DAST, SIEM/EDR, and working knowledge of compliance frameworks (SOC 2, NIST, ISO 27001, ITAR, FedRAMP, or equivalent).
• Hands-on experience designing incident response, post-mortem, DR, and business continuity programs from scratch.
• Experience driving IaC standardization and DevOps maturity across an engineering organization — not just within a single team.
• Track record of cloud cost reduction through FinOps practices — unit economics, per-team budget accountability, and leadership-facing visibility.
• The ability to translate infrastructure ambiguity into a prioritized roadmap with clear owners and measurable outcomes.
• Experience managing vendor relationships and infrastructure budgets at the organizational level.
• Startup or high-growth company experience: the ability to distinguish between tech debt that matters and tech debt that can wait.
• MLOps infrastructure experience (Kubeflow, Airflow, or equivalent) preferred.
• ITAR or FedRAMP hands-on experience preferred.
• Relevant certifications (CISSP, CISM, CCSP, or equivalent) preferred.

Key competencies

Systems Thinking: Ability to visualize and design how AI agent systems connect, share data, and enable valuable customer outcomes at scale.

Grit: Self-starter, persistent problem solver, relentless in the pursuit of progress in ambiguous 0-to-1 product environments.

Customer Empathy: Deep understanding of how enterprise customers operate; asks the right questions and designs solutions that stick.

Innovator: Passionate about applying emerging AI capabilities to practical, measurable business problems before the patterns are written.

Adaptability: Comfortable operating in dynamic, fast-moving customer and company environments where the approach evolves with new information.

Leadership: Ability to drive agent skill initiatives end-to-end with minimal oversight, aligning cross-functional teams to shared outcomes.

Why Albert?

We have a huge impact. Albert is a growing team with a global reach. We’re building toward a future where discovery feels like exploration, not administration. Where chemists can pursue their most ambitious ideas without friction.

We love our global team. Albert’s home-base is in the California Bay Area, but we have multiple offices and employees sprinkled around the globe: India, Germany and Japan. In fact, over 50% of our employees work outside of California. An international remote culture is in our DNA.

We care about you. Albert works hard to create a positive environment for our employees, and we think your life outside of work is important too. We work hard and we play hard.

We value diversity. Growing and maintaining our inclusive and diverse team matters to us. We are committed to being a company where our employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work and have the ability to be successful — every day.

We’re always looking for humble, sharp, and creative folks to join the Albert team. If you think you might be a fit, please apply.