Senior Manager, Community Programs & Operations
Remote Location: Boston, MA; Seattle, WA; Austin, TX; or Washington, DC

Position Summary

As the Senior Manager, Community Programs & Operations, you will lead and scale HackerOne's global hacker community programs, owning the strategy, systems, and execution that help researchers grow, stay engaged, and deliver increasing value on the platform.

This role is foundational to making HackerOne the home for the world's best hackers by combining strong people leadership, scalable program design, and operational rigor. You will lead a small team of community professionals and contractors, prioritize the highest-impact investments, and build the workflows, cross-functional partnerships, and tooling requirements needed to grow and retain a thriving, high-performing global researcher community.

Success in this role means improving hacker satisfaction and retention, accelerating researcher progression across key cohorts, scaling flagship community programs, and strengthening the researcher side of the ecosystem in ways that improve marketplace health and deliver greater value to customers. You will play a critical role in building on the strong foundation of Community's existing programs, helping scale their impact through clearer lifecycle design, stronger operating discipline, and systems that support long-term growth. This role requires a builder-operator who is innovative, energized by challenging the norm, and confident rolling up their sleeves to develop and execute creative solutions.

At HackerOne, we embrace a Flexible Work approach that gives us the freedom to do our best work while also fostering the connections and community that make us stronger. Reflecting this philosophy, this is a remote role targeted for candidates within ~50 miles of Boston, MA; Seattle, WA; Austin, TX; or Washington, DC. We believe this balance of proximity and flexibility gives Hackeronies the chance to occasionally come together - fostering collaboration, connection, and in-person moments that enrich our culture - while still preserving the benefits of remote work.

What You Will Do

Success in the Senior Manager role will be accomplished by delivering on the responsibilities below in alignment with the Values and Principles that define how we work at HackerOne.

Multiply Your Impact

Lead and develop a high-performing team of community professionals and contractors by creating clarity, accountability, and scalable ways of working. Build team capability, establish strong operating rhythms, and reduce single-threaded dependency through documentation, prioritization, and repeatable processes.

Own the Outcome

Own the strategy and execution of flagship community programs and lifecycle motions that drive hacker retention, satisfaction, progression, and long-term loyalty. Ensure Community investments are tied to measurable business outcomes, including stronger cohort progression, improved engagement quality, healthier retention of high-value researchers, and increased value for customers. Focus on attracting and retaining high-value researchers who drive meaningful security outcomes, not just overall engagement volume.

AI First

Champion an AI First approach by identifying opportunities to improve community operations, lifecycle engagement, reporting, and support workflows through automation and AI-enabled tools. Help the organization build more scalable, intelligent systems that improve researcher experience and team productivity. Use emerging tools, experimentation, and hands-on execution to accelerate program performance and unlock new ways to improve the researcher experience.Enhancing researcher matching, signal quality improvement and researcher and customer outcomes

Change Agility

Adapt quickly to evolving researcher needs, market dynamics, tooling maturity, and company priorities. Make thoughtful tradeoffs, sequence work against capacity, and keep the team focused on the highest-impact opportunities as Community continues to grow and scale.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Define, track, and improve KPIs related to hacker retention, satisfaction, lifecycle progression, engagement, and program effectiveness. Build clear feedback loops across programs, communications, events, and experiments to identify what is working, where friction exists, and what actions will most improve outcomes at scale. Serve as Community's primary data liaison to help ensure continuity and acceleration of existing programs as they relate to data architecture, lifecycle measurement, and tooling design. Partner closely with cross-functional teams to translate Community needs into durable data and systems requirements.

First Principles Problem Solving

Redesign community motions, operating models, and engagement approaches by simplifying complexity and focusing on what drives the most value for hackers, customers, and HackerOne. Improve how programs are structured, how milestones and recognition are delivered, how researchers move through lifecycle stages, and how community systems scale over time. Bring a builder-and-breaker mindset to the role: challenge assumptions, test new approaches, and roll up your sleeves to develop and execute creative solutions.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Partner closely with Product, Marketing, Customer Success, Events, Data, and Operations teams to improve the end-to-end researcher experience. Translate voice-of-community insights into prioritized recommendations, operational improvements, and scalable lifecycle interventions that align community strategy to company goals. Act as the primary owner of HackerOne's Diverse Hacker Advisory Board, using it as a strategic feedback and governance mechanism to help accelerate the researcher experience on HackerOne. Given the impact on customer outcomes, we are looking for someone to help further define our partnership with Customer Success; particularly around feedback loops, program performance insights, and aligning community strategy to retention and expansion goals.

Scalable Program and Event Execution

Lead and support community-led activations, researcher-facing programs, and event-related motions with a focus on quality, consistency, and measurable follow-through. Ensure these efforts contribute to long-term researcher growth, engagement, ecosystem health, and platform value.
Scope and Operating Expectations

This role is a strategic programs and operations leadership role within Community. It is expected to improve how Community scales, not simply absorb more manual work.

This role will:

• lead a small team and contractor bench
• own prioritized community programs and lifecycle motions
• help define systems, tooling requirements, and operating models
• improve how researchers are engaged, retained, and progressed over time

Success depends on strengthening the systems, partnerships, and community programs that enable scale.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in community, program, lifecycle, marketplace, or operations leadership roles, with demonstrated success scaling programs or operational motions
• 3+ years of experience leading high-performing teams, including coaching, performance management, contractor/vendor oversight, and team development
• Experience building or scaling programs using data, automation, CRM workflows, or other operational systems
• Experience defining metrics and using them to improve business outcomes, program effectiveness, and user engagement
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills, with the ability to drive alignment across Product, Marketing, Operations, and go-to-market partners
• Experience in cybersecurity, vulnerability management, developer ecosystems, or similarly technical community environments
• Competency using emerging AI tools to support experimentation, iteration, and hands-on problem solving. Familiarity with human-in-the-loop, agentic, or automation-driven workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with global communities, marketplaces, or technical ecosystems, ideally in security, developer, or open-source environments
• Experience leading strategic programs that drive retention, progression, loyalty, and long-term ecosystem health
• Experience partnering with data, systems, or architecture teams to improve lifecycle design, tooling, CRM strategy, segmentation, or community operations
• Experience leading advisory boards, strategic feedback programs, community events, or other scaled engagement initiatives
• Familiarity with AI tools and automation used to improve workflows, reporting, and operational scale
• Comfortable operating as both a builder and a breaker, with the judgment to improve existing systems while pressure-testing new ideas.

Compensation Bands:
Tier Guide

Tier B: $175-190K Base

Offers equity

#LI-KM1
Job Benefits:

• Health (medical, vision, dental), life, and disability insurance*
• Equity stock options
• Retirement plans
• Paid public holidays and unlimited PTO
• Paid maternity and parental leave
• Leaves of absence (including caregiver leave and leave under CO's Healthy Families and Workplaces Act)
• Employee Assistance Program

*Eligibility may differ by country

We're committed to building a global team! For certain roles outside the United States, India, the U.K., and the Netherlands, we partner with Remote.com as our Employer of Record (EOR).