Enterprise Security Software Company
Building the practices around a growing product
The challenge
The product monitored Public Key Infrastructure—the systems that issue and validate digital certificates used to secure communications. On my second day, a defect in a release shipped before I joined caused monitored Certification Authority services to crash, leaving the service unavailable across all customers. It exposed insufficient quality assurance and no formal incident management process. Testing was concentrated near the end of quarterly release cycles.
My approach
I joined a customer call and brought in an engineer to triage the failure. The response involved a rollback and a patch rolled out within the first week. I introduced Jira and Confluence to track work and document decisions, then Zephyr to make test coverage visible. Training and an adapted Scrum practice helped the fully remote team build shared delivery habits. Within the first year, we moved to monthly releases and clearer decisions about what could ship. I joined support calls, introduced a support tracking system, and later hired the first support engineer. I owned a budget exceeding $2.5M and vendor selection and delivery. The platform turned more than one million daily certificate-related events into security insights, with APIs feeding those insights into customers’ existing security monitoring tools. Customer conversations also shaped the roadmap: I prioritized post-quantum readiness reporting over a chatbot customers were not asking for.
The decisions I owned
I took responsibility for the product and engineering operating practices: work visibility, testing, release priorities, and customer support. After the initial incident, the immediate response was a rollback and patch. The longer-term work was to make testing and release decisions visible rather than concentrate manual testing at the end of a quarterly cycle.
Choosing what deserved investment
An AI chatbot competed for attention with post-quantum readiness reporting. Customers were not asking for the chatbot, and it raised concerns for security-minded buyers. I deferred it and prioritized readiness reporting. That decision illustrates my approach to product investment; it is not a claim that the reporting capability shipped or independently caused the growth figures below.
Building capability across the team
The remote team had mixed experience with structured delivery, and reactions to the changes were divided. I supplied training alongside the new practices. I initially joined customer support calls and triaged issues myself, then hired the first support engineer in October 2024 to take on onboarding and triage. Establishing explicit ownership was part of building the organization, not simply adding tools.
The outcome
Over three years, the business saw 4x new-customer growth and 3.5x ARR growth. Later AI adoption across Product and Engineering increased delivery velocity 50% in 90 days while escaped defects stayed below 5%. Net revenue retention was 100% in the first two years and over 92% in year three; this is a revenue measure, separate from the customer counts that follow. The platform also earned industry recognition and a cybersecurity award. We retained 36 of 39 customers; the three departures reflected contract negotiations, an acquisition and closure, and economic factors. None were attributed to gaps in perceived customer value or satisfaction.