Are you ready to make an impact?

Critical Start delivers human-driven threat detection and response to prevent business disruption and stop breaches. Ready to join us?  

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Join our Critical Crew!

We are growing rapidly and seeking exceptional talent like you. We’re committed to empowering our employees and fostering an environment of continuous learning and collaboration. We embrace diversity across all dimensions – racial, ethnic, gender, and individual differences – creating an environment where everyone can thrive. Our success is built on three core principles that guide everything we do:

Do what’s best for our customers.

Do what’s best for our employees.

Don’t do things that suck.

Don’t believe us? Hear from our team members about why they like working at Critical Start.

Rob Davis, CISSP

Founder & Executive Chairman

Working at Critical Start

Critical Start offers a professional environment where our work directly prevents business disruption and stops breaches for our customers. While our mission is serious, our culture is vibrant and engaging. We support flexible work arrangements including in-office, remote, and hybrid options. Our HQ in Plano, TX features collaborative spaces, wellness facilities, and recreational areas for team building and relaxation. We’re expanding globally with offices in Lehi, UT and Pune, India!

Savannah Overly

Sr. Security Operations Engineer

Who we are

Critical Start is elevating managed detection and response through human-driven expertise and complete signal coverage. We’re seeking talented individuals who share our commitment to stopping business disruption and preventing breaches. In our fast-paced environment, we prioritize our employees’ success through collaboration, flexibility, and fairness. We proudly provide accommodations for team members with disabilities and maintain our commitment to fostering an inclusive culture where everyone belongs.

Jackie Allen

Account Executive

Critical Culture

Our culture is built on excellence in cyber defense and creating meaningful impact for our customers. 

We foster an environment that encourages collaboration, innovation, and personal growth, enabling all team members to thrive. 

Through our Employee Resource Groups, Culture Squad, and Buddy Program, we create an inclusive community where everyone belongs. 

Join us in elevating the standard for cybersecurity! 

Learn More About Our Culture

Irfahn Khimji

Managing Director, Canada

Suhail Rahmetulla

Principal Operations Engineer

Want to hear what it’s like to be a part of our team? Listen to what our other Critical Crew Members have to say!

Watch Employee Testimonials

Work at one of the best places to work

Critical Start ranked 11th in Midsize Companies Category in The Dallas Morning News’ Top 100 Places to Work for 2022! The Dallas Morning News’ Top 100 Places To Work is conducted by its research partner, Energage, and is predicated on an extensive employee survey that celebrates excellence in areas such as company leadership, compensation, training, workplace flexibility, diversity and more. In 2022, the 14th year for the Top 100 awards in D-FW, a record-breaking number of nearly 6,000 deserving companies were nominated and more than 156,000 employees were surveyed.

We also ranked as #23 best mid-sized places to work in Dallas and #68 best places to work in Dallas on the Built In 2023 Best Places to Work list!

Apply to join our Critical Crew to work at one of the best places to work!

Benefits of working for Critical Start

Make a Difference

You will have a direct opportunity to drive significant shareholder, customer and employee value.

Learn New Skills

Enjoy a constant stream of new technologies—and new ideas—to learn and master.

Make an Impact

The work you’ll do will directly impact the experience of our customers and the industry as a whole.

Great Work Culture

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

Meet some of the Critical Start team

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
Sr. Channel Marketing Manager

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
Principal Engineer

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
Sr. 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.

Read more

Critical Start Transparency

Check out our ratings on

This rating is based on unaltered and unedited reviews of Critical Start employees.

97  %

Recommend to a Friend

Majority of Critical Start Employees say they would recommend the company to someone they know.

98  %

Culture and Values

Critical Start employees are satisfied with the company culture that is defined by a strong set of values.

90  %

Work Life Balance

Whether in or out of the workplace, our employees are living their best life.

100  %

CEO Approval

Our employees approve fully of our CEO.

Learn more on glassdoor.com