Your Security Team Is a Police Department. You Need to Hire Architects.
For most organizations, "security" is a reactive function. A separate team runs a vulnerability scanner, performs a penetration test, or responds to an incident after the code has already been written and deployed. This model is fundamentally broken. It treats security as a gatekeeper, a QA step at the end of a flawed process. The result is a constant state of friction between development and security, slow release cycles, and a platform that is riddled with vulnerabilities that were predictable and preventable.
True Security Engineering is about shifting security left. It is the discipline of building security into every stage of the software development lifecycle, from initial design to deployment and operation. It requires a hybrid skillset: the attacker's mindset of a penetration tester, the systems thinking of an architect, and the coding skills of a developer. Engineers with this skillset are the force multipliers who enable the rest of the organization to move fast, safely. They don't just find vulnerabilities; they design systems where entire classes of vulnerabilities cannot exist.
An engineer who knows how to run a security scanner is not a Security Engineer. An expert can perform a threat model on a new feature, design a secure authentication system, write a secure coding standard for their team, and build the automated tooling to enforce it. This playbook explains how Axiom Cortex finds these true security professionals.
Traditional Vetting and Vendor Limitations
A nearshore vendor sees "Security" or "Cybersecurity" on a résumé and assumes competence. The interview involves asking the candidate to define "SQL injection" or list the OWASP Top 10. This process finds people who can memorize security jargon. It completely fails to find engineers who have had to design a secure cloud architecture, implement a robust secrets management strategy, or lead an incident response for a real-world breach.
The predictable and painful results of this superficial vetting are common:
- Security Theater: The team has a suite of security tools, but they are misconfigured and generate thousands of false positives. The alerts are ignored, and a critical vulnerability makes it to production because everyone assumed the "tool" was handling it.
- The "Paved Cowpath": The security team provides developers with a set of "secure" libraries and patterns, but these patterns are clumsy, poorly documented, and slow developers down. The developers find workarounds, re-introducing the very vulnerabilities the security team was trying to prevent.
- Reactive Whack-a-Mole: The security team is in a constant state of firefighting, patching vulnerabilities as they are discovered, but they are never able to get ahead of the problem and address the root architectural causes.
- The "Compliance-as-Security" Fallacy: The team is focused on checking the boxes for a SOC 2 or a PCI audit, but they are not actually building a secure system. They have a policy document for everything, but no automated enforcement.
The business impact is a toxic combination of high risk and low velocity. The company is constantly exposed to the threat of a major breach, and the engineering team is slowed down by a security process that is seen as a burden, not a help.
How Axiom Cortex Evaluates Security Engineers
Axiom Cortex is designed to find the engineers who think about security as a complete, end-to-end system. We test for the practical skills in threat modeling, secure architecture, and automation that are essential for building a modern, proactive security program. We evaluate candidates across four critical dimensions.
Dimension 1: Threat Modeling and Secure Design
This dimension tests a candidate's ability to think like an attacker and to proactively identify and mitigate security risks in the design phase, before a single line of code is written.
We provide candidates with the design for a new feature and evaluate their ability to:
- Perform a Threat Model: Can they use a framework like STRIDE to identify potential threats (Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, Elevation of Privilege)?
- Design Security Controls: For each identified threat, can they propose a concrete set of design patterns or security controls to mitigate it? For example, can they design a secure password reset flow or a system for preventing insecure direct object references?
Dimension 2: Application and Infrastructure Security
This dimension tests a candidate's hands-on knowledge of how to secure the full stack, from the application code to the underlying cloud infrastructure.
We present a scenario and evaluate if they can:
- Write Secure Code: Are they proficient in identifying and preventing common web application vulnerabilities (OWASP Top 10)?
- Secure Cloud Infrastructure: Can they design a secure cloud environment? This includes configuring IAM policies with least privilege, designing secure network architectures (VPCs, security groups), and managing secrets with a tool like Vault or AWS Secrets Manager.
- Harden Container Environments: Do they know how to build secure Docker images, run containers as non-root users, and use Kubernetes security features like NetworkPolicies and PodSecurityPolicies?
Dimension 3: Security Automation ("Sec" in DevOps)
A modern security program is an automated one. This dimension tests a candidate's ability to build security into the CI/CD pipeline.
We evaluate their ability to:
- Implement "Security as Code": Can they use a tool like Terraform to codify and enforce security policies (e.g., IAM roles, security group rules)?
- Build a Secure CI/CD Pipeline: Can they design a CI/CD pipeline that automatically scans for vulnerable dependencies (SCA), static analysis issues (SAST), and container vulnerabilities?
Dimension 4: Incident Response and Communication
An elite security engineer must be able to lead and communicate effectively during a high-stakes security incident.
Axiom Cortex simulates a security incident to see how a candidate:
- Manages an Incident: We give them a scenario: "We've detected a data breach." We observe their process. Do they focus on containment, eradication, and recovery? How do they gather evidence and communicate with stakeholders?
- Conducts a Blameless Post-Mortem: After the simulated incident, can they lead a discussion to identify the root cause and propose concrete, systemic improvements to prevent the same class of vulnerability from happening again?
From a Reactive Cost Center to a Proactive Business Enabler
When you staff your organization with security engineers who have passed the Axiom Cortex assessment, you are making a strategic investment in your ability to innovate safely and quickly.
A fast-growing SaaS company was struggling to pass security reviews with large enterprise customers. Their security process was ad-hoc and reactive. Using the Nearshore IT Co-Pilot, we assembled a "Product Security" pod of two elite nearshore security engineers.
In their first quarter, this team:
- Implemented a Threat Modeling Program: They taught the product teams how to perform lightweight threat modeling on all new features.
- Built a "Paved Road" for Secure Development: They built a secure CI/CD pipeline and a library of standardized, secure components that made it easy for developers to "do the right thing" by default.
The result was transformative. The number of vulnerabilities found in production dropped by over 95%. The company was able to achieve SOC 2 compliance in record time and started winning the large enterprise deals that had been previously out of reach.
What This Changes for CTOs and CIOs
Using Axiom Cortex to hire for Security Engineering is not about finding someone to run a scanner. It is about insourcing the discipline of building secure systems from the ground up. It is a strategic move to turn security from a bottleneck into an accelerator.
It allows you to change the conversation with your CEO, your board, and your customers. Instead of talking about security as a source of fear and uncertainty, you can talk about it as a core competency and a competitive advantage. You can say:
"We have built a product security program with a nearshore team that has been scientifically vetted for their ability to design and automate proactive security controls. This allows us to ship features faster and more safely than our competitors and provides our customers with a provably secure platform they can trust."