About Joel Holmes
Senior AppSec Product Manager in Toronto. Most of my job is translation: getting security engineers and business stakeholders to understand each other well enough for real work to get done.
I got into tech by breaking my dad's computer. I'd mistype a command, watch everything go wrong, and frantically fix it before he found out. I never got a tech degree; that loop of try, fail, fix is still how I learn.
My first tech job happened because I needed one: new baby, small apartment, bills. The internal helpdesk at Quicken Loans was hiring. I stayed a decade and worked my way from support tickets to leading teams to product management. Somewhere in there I stopped being the person asking questions and became the person people asked. The long version is here.
These days I'm at Scotiabank, applying AI to AppSec (threat modeling, risk prioritization, metrics, vendor evaluations) and being honest about where it helps and where it confidently wastes your time.
This site is where I sometimes think out loud: security fundamentals, leadership lessons, and what AI actually changes about the work. If something here is useful, or I got it wrong, I'd like to hear about it.
Open to AppSec Product Manager opportunities
Based in Toronto, Canada. Available for full-time, contract, and advisory roles in the GTA and remotely.