Headway Career Growth & Development

Why did you join Headway’s cybersecurity team? What does a typical day look like for you?

I’ve been interested in cybersecurity since college, and my interest was so strong that I decided to pursue a PhD. I joined Headway because I was excited about the mission of building a mental health care platform that everyone can access. Trust, primarily focusing on security and privacy to start with, is particularly important for both the therapist and the patient to feel comfortable on our platform. I was the first security hire and enjoy being that because I can build from zero to one and see how the organization has grown.

My day-to-day work varies a lot. Some days, I’m writing code. Some days, I’m working on organizational strategy. On some other days, I’m reviewing docs and providing security guidance. I really like the variety and being able to flex into different areas.

What makes Headway’s approach to cybersecurity unique? What gets you most excited to get out of bed each day?

We are much more focused on trust rather than just risk mitigation. This means we work closely with engineering and product counterparts across the company to ensure that we deliver a secure product. We also look to help fix issues rather than just surfacing risks.

I’m excited to get out of bed and work on securing a product with an important mission and work with a world-class team. There’s always something new to learn!

How can someone accelerate their cybersecurity career at Headway?

Trust is a growing team within Headway, offering experienced security engineers the opportunity to work with leadership in co-defining their areas of ownership and impact as we move out of early startup mode and into operating as a later-stage upstart. There’s a tremendous amount of room for continued growth given the diversity of problems to potentially solve, and the diversity of users we’re building for — patients, providers, therapists, insurance customers and employees.

Engineers on the team have the opportunity to influence and build for multiple domains within security, advancing in both their breadth of security knowledge as well as depth of expertise in important functions within emerging industries like security and privacy. There’s no upper limit to learning opportunities as we flex into different areas and increase the scope of learning new things, all while being supported by a world-class team.