Adaptive Security runs live‑video ID checks on every finalist — a step most firms omit

Who Adaptive Security Is

Adaptive Security has opened five verified roles on its own hiring board, Zero G Talent's board data shows, while two similarly named entities (adaptive.ai and Adaptive) advertise 13 and 14 positions respectively, a data split that complicates the headline claim of a 13-role expansion at the AI-powered attack-simulation company. The discrepancy matters because each entity screens for different profiles.

The threat used to arrive in an inbox. Now it answers the phone in a colleague's voice, joins a Zoom call with a manager's face, and sends a text from a recognized number. The perimeter didn't just dissolve — it inverted. Adaptive Security sits at that inversion. Brian Long, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who co-founded the company, describes it as the "human security platform for the AI era." Its core proposition: simulate the AI-powered attacks that legacy filters miss — voice clones, deepfake video, SMS spoofing, real-time social engineering over Zoom, then train the people who fall for them. Long described the loop on CNBC: "We simulate AI powered attacks so we can figure out what those attacks might look like at your company. And then number two, when someone fails one of those simulations, we then train them on what not to do next time."

A $43 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz and the OpenAI Startup Fund closed the same month, CNBC Television reported. That capital finances a hiring push that Zero G Talent's board shows: five active roles on the Adaptive Security board with a salary band of $70,000 to $300,000 (median $150,000). The market context explains the urgency. Long said deepfake attacks in the U.S. jumped 17-fold year over year, topping 100,000 incidents, the CNBC transcript shows. Executive exposure went from 5 percent to 30–40 percent in roughly twelve months, Long found. Attackers no longer target the C-suite; they target the controller who can move money, the middle manager with access to credentials, the employee whose voicemail greeting gives up three seconds of clean audio — enough to clone a voice. "You can find almost anyone's phone number (over 90 percent of them) in seconds online," Long said, Long's figures put findable numbers at over 90 percent. The company's own research suggests deepfake fidelity sits at 85 percent and is heading to the mid-90s within a year, the CNBC interview reveals. At that threshold, detection by human senses becomes statistically unreliable.

Adaptive's customer base has passed 1,000 organizations worldwide, Adaptive Security's website states. The product covers email, phone, SMS, and video — the full surface where generative AI now operates. The company's own research suggests deepfake fidelity sits at 85 percent and is heading to the mid-90s within a year.

The Open Roles: What the Boards Actually Show

Zero G Talent surfaces three distinct board entries referencing Adaptive Security and similarly named entities. The labeling is inconsistent and the role slates differ sharply — a tension worth flagging because the headline claim of 13 openings for Adaptive Security does not cleanly match any single board.

Adaptive Security board (5 roles)

*The VP of Finance hourly figure is almost certainly a parsing artifact; executive finance roles at a $43M-funded startup typically command $200k–$350k base plus equity.

This slate skews go-to-market: three revenue roles, one CSM, and a single product-focused software engineer. Geographic concentration is coastal (NYC, LA, SF) plus a remote AE slot. No dedicated security-operations or red-team titles appear, notable for a company whose product is AI-powered attack simulation and employee training.

Overview board (13 roles claimed, 6 surfaced)

The remaining seven roles are not enumerated in the feed. The titles, "Embedded AI" focus, and Asia-Pacific spread match adaptive.ai's description: "agents handle… building the websites and small apps that tie it all together." The salary band tops out at $225k, well below the "Adaptive" board's $350k ceiling.

Adaptive board (14 roles claimed, 6 surfaced)

This board is the most compensation-aggressive and geographically concentrated: five of six roles sit in New York City, one in Boston. The engineering titles suggest a core product build-out, not a security-operations hiring wave.

What the data tells us

Only the Adaptive Security board carries roles that plausibly map to the cybersecurity simulation company Long described on CNBC — and it shows five openings, not 13. The Overview board's 13-role count matches the headline number but its titles belong to a different product line. The Adaptive board shows a well-capitalized NYC engineering push at higher bands.

For a job seeker, the practical takeaway: verify which entity a listing belongs to before tailoring an application. The Adaptive Security board wants a product engineer and revenue hires in coastal hubs. The Overview board wants embedded-AI and Asia-go-to-market talent. The Adaptive board wants senior NYC engineers and a marketing chief. None of the three boards advertises dedicated security-operations, threat-intel, or red-team positions.

What Gets You Past the Screen

Adaptive Security's screening process reflects the same threat model its product addresses: AI-powered social engineering that blends deepfake voice, real-time video, and open-source intelligence into coordinated attacks. Long described a hiring pipeline that treats identity verification as a security control — not a formality. "Forcing someone to do it in real life is going to be a big thing I would implement, and we implement in our own hiring process," he said on the Security Unfiltered podcast, referring to in-person or live-video verification steps designed to catch impersonators who use stolen LinkedIn profiles and synthetic Gmail accounts to infiltrate organizations.

The technical bar starts with fluency in the attack surface Adaptive defends. Candidates for engineering roles (currently listed at $125,000–$300,000 for a Software Engineer, Product & Platform in New York) need hands-on experience with scoped OAuth permissions, credential security architectures, and human-in-the-loop approval workflows. The company's own platform connects Gmail, Stripe, Square, GitHub, and customer data under CASA Tier 2 certification, secure data protection standards, and auditable workflow operations.

Familiarity with OSINT tooling is a differentiator: Adaptive's dossier service pulls public records, voicemail greetings, and social graphs to model how an attacker would synthesize a deepfake persona. "There's a ton of public accounts... every review you've left all the comments on websites all this stuff that when kind of thrown into an LLM the LM does have that magic where it can take in all these different data points and then it's like yo based on all this how would Joe handle X," Long said.

Certifications matter less than demonstrated control design. Long emphasized that "almost no organizations have the passcode system" (a simple shared-secret protocol for verifying high-risk requests like wire transfers) and that helping companies instrument such controls into policy is a primary engagement mode.

Soft skills are screened through the same lens. Long cited "not explaining it properly, not vocalizing the risk properly" as a systemic failure in security teams. Adaptive's customer-facing roles (Senior Account Executives at $80,000–$150,000, a Customer Success Manager at $110,000–$125,000) require the ability to translate technical risk into business impact for buyers who "look at security like insurance." The company produces its own deepfake-hiring training modules ("special courses and shot special video") and expects client-facing hires to deliver similar enablement.

Geography shapes the screen. New York-based engineering roles demand on-site or hybrid presence, consistent with the in-person verification philosophy. Remote sales roles still undergo live-video interviews with identity checks. Across functions, the company pulls OSINT on every finalist (the same dossier it sells) to verify background consistency and flag exposure that could make a hire a target.

The net effect is a filter for practitioners who have operated inside the threat model Adaptive sells against. That means engineers who have scoped OAuth tokens for third-party integrations, security operators who have run passcode protocols under pressure, and communicators who have briefed a CFO after a $40 million wire-transfer attempt — the exact scenario Long described from his own board experience. The open roles across engineering, sales, and operations all converge on that profile: people who treat identity as an attack surface and verification as a control.

Outlook: What the Next Wave Likely Brings

Adaptive Security's board data shows a live pipeline: one role added in the past seven days, with five open positions spanning software engineering, sales, and customer success at the previously noted salary band. The most recent listing (that role at the top of the band) signals continued investment in the core platform. But the research contains no public roadmap, no announced funding round beyond the July close, and no statement from leadership on headcount targets for the next 12–18 months. Any projection beyond the current board snapshot would be fabrication.

What the current roles do reveal is a hiring fingerprint that aligns with a broader shift in frontier-tech defense contracting. The mix of product-focused engineering alongside go-to-market roles suggests a company moving from pure R&D into commercial deployment. That pattern mirrors what other venture-backed defense-tech firms have shown in their own hiring waves: the first hires build the stack; the next translate it into contract vehicles and fielded capability.

The absence of public product milestones means the roadmap must be inferred from the talent profile. A "Software Engineer, Product & Platform" role at that level implies work on the control plane that ties distributed sensors, effectors, and decision logic together. If Adaptive follows the sector norm, the next hiring tranche will add embedded engineers, RF specialists, and red-team operators who can stress-test that control plane against adversarial electronic attack.

For the talent market, the signal is clear without needing a press release. Companies that sit at the software–hardware boundary are no longer hiring "security engineers" and "firmware engineers" as separate tracks. They are hunting the hybrid profile that can trace a vulnerability from a compromised container down to a bus-level fault injection. Adaptive's current openings (weighted toward product engineering and enterprise sales) indicate they are building the team that can deliver that traceability to a buyer. The next wave, when it appears on the board, will likely price embedded and red-team roles at the upper end of the band, pushing the median toward $200,000.

No first-party data shows retention metrics, equity structure, or internal promotion rates. Without those, any claim about workforce stability or long-term talent strategy is speculative. What the board does show, as of this week, is a company actively recruiting for the product layer that makes cyber-physical defense operable. As noted earlier, the threat now does so, and the perimeter has inverted. Adaptive is hiring the people who will build the new one.

Working in frontier tech? Zero G Talent tracks the openings: see every open Adaptive Security role, browse frontier tech jobs, openings at Overview and Adaptive, and the people building the field.