Benefits of working for Critical Start
You will have a direct opportunity to drive significant shareholder, customer and employee value.
Enjoy a constant stream of new technologies—and new ideas—to learn and master.
The work you’ll do will directly impact the experience of our customers and the industry as a whole.
Join an open, supportive and collaborative work environment.
Career Mentorship Program
Professional development is a high priority of Critical Start’s Executives. The Career Mentorship Program is a 6-month program dedicating at least 1 hour per month toward mentor career development.
What is mentorship?
- Planned, ongoing and developing process facilitating improved performance and skills based on shared experiences
- Exclusive, one-to-one, confidential and collaborative relationship designed to further the development and achievement
- Introduces an independent and objective source of help outside of a direct managerial or supervisory relationship
How will employees be paired with a mentor?
Talent Management & HR will match mentee & mentor based on:
- Developmental goals & needs
- Aspirational experience
- Time or location difference
What will mentees receive?
- Support from an experienced colleague who can provide invaluable guidance in your career
- A guide and FAQs on structuring the mentoring process
- Individual Professional Development Plan Template
EDUCATION
BA in Business Management & BFA in Dance, UMass Amherst
EXPERIENCE
Oracle, Black Duck, Avecto, BeyondTrust
RESPONSIBILITIES
• Strategic planning with our partners to build out revenue-generating marketing campaigns
• Run CriticalStart-only events that generate leads to bring back to the channel
• Create memorable brand experiences that bring the CriticalStart brand to life
MOTIVATION
I am motivated by the people around me to keep learning and improving. I love “stealing”
bits from people I work with to create my own toolbox, whether that’s a template, a way of
communicating, a presentation style, anything! I’m not sure what role I will have in 5 years,
but I know that I’ll be better today than I was yesterday.
CHALLENGES
Implementing scalable processes and wearing a lot of hats. But that’s half the fun of it, right?!
Allie Stevens
Senior Director of Channel & Field Marketing
EDUCATION
BS in Electrical Engineering, UT Dallas
EXPERIENCE
8+ years as a software engineer and site reliability engineer
RESPONSIBILITIES
Build and operate ZTAP, our product which supports the MDR business. Own delivery of my code and
features all the way to production. Participate in outage remediation and root-cause-analysis activities.
MOTIVATION
Currently studying for the OSCP exam to broaden my security knowledge
CHALLENGES
• New systems and components I have to familiarize myself with
• Growing pains since the company is growing very quickly
Jonathan Seawright
Senior Python Engineer
EDUCATION
Bachelor’s in Creative Writing | Old Dominion University
EXPERIENCE
- Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP)
- Self-taught infosec and software engineering for over 20 years
- Fluent in over a dozen programing languages
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Analyze malicious activity and malware to improve detection, prevention, and mitigation
- Research developing trends in adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures
- Study red-team (offensive) tactics to improve blue-team (defensive) efficacy
- Encourage the growth of fellow analysts via training and collaboration
- Keep customers abreast of the latest threats to their organizations
MOTIVATION
Expand my knowledge, share it with others, and promote our shared success
CHALLENGES
I am constantly learning new programming languages, attack methods, malware techniques, etc. It can be hard to keep up! I’m fortunate to be part of an excellent Cyber Threat Intelligence team that identifies emergent threats and helps prioritize my efforts.
Kristen Steffen
Malware Reverse Engineer
EDUCATION:
B.A. Communication Studies , California State University, Long Beach
EXPERIENCE:
5 years, Ingram Micro (Marketing); 1 year, SC Fuels (Sales)
RESPONSIBILITIES
•Build out effective partner marketing programs that map to channel marketing KPIs
• Collaborate with national and distribution channel account teams and the demand generation
team to build and develop content strategies that will boost pipeline goals
• Work closely with internal stakeholders, channel, and technology partner networks to drive partner marketing efforts
Katie Pollaro
Channel Marketing Manager
EDUCATION:
BS (H) in Computer Science | Delhi University
Post Graduate Diploma in Information Security | IGNOU
MS in Computer Science | California State University, Fullerton
EXPERIENCE:
Before becoming a back-end developer at Critical Start, I worked at several roles as a Student Assistant, Graduate Research Assistant and as an intern in different fields.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Developing software solutions, features, and enhancements for our MDR platform. Monitoring
production environment, troubleshooting production issues, improving Azure Sentinel detections through detection engineering, product integration, reporting.
GOALS
Gain knowledge and use it to make meaningful contributions towards better cybersecurity platforms.
Priyanka Sharma
Software Engineer II
EDUCATION
Graduated High School in 2016
EXPERIENCE
5 years in customer service in the Retail and Entertainment industries | 2 years at CriticalSTART
RESPONSIBILITIES
Manage MDR customers from onboarding through each renewal period | Build and maintain relationships with each customer, their teams and different partners in the account
GOALS
• Get customers to a solid state within their security posture by engaging all resources within CriticalSTART to make that happen
• Help people, learn new skills and find solutions to unique problems
CHALLENGES
• Without a security or IT background, there was a bit of a learning curve, but there is no better place to learn than CriticalSTART
Marshall Mechler
MDR Customer Success Manager
How would you describe your work style?
Critical Start has upgraded our hiring process. We now use the Predictive Index (PI) to identify how you work. Through PI, we learn how you like to communicate and collaborate so we can build a team that’s more fun and more effective.
Critical Start Transparency
Check out our ratings on
This rating is based on unaltered and unedited reviews of Critical Start employees.
