Inside the Day of a Spotify Security Engineer
Nour Daoud Bösing is a Security Engineer at Spotify’s New York office, balancing a hands-on technical role with a Master’s degree in Cyber Security at NYU and parenting her 11-month-old daughter, Leya. Her day starts early — not by alarm clock, but by her daughter — in Jersey City, just across the river from the office. Without a commute, she fits in an hour of yoga while her husband entertains Leya.
Early Mornings, Cross-Timezone Collaboration
By 7:30am, Nour is at work. She sits on the Product Security team, which collaborates heavily with colleagues in Sweden, so the early start helps bridge the time-zone gap. The role shifts character from project to project: some weeks lean heavily into consultancy and design work, while others are nearly all programming.
A concrete example is Spotify’s acquisition of the podcasting platform Anchor. Nour handled the security assessment, enumerating issues and prioritizing what needed attention first. She then shifted into an engineering role, embedding with the Anchor team for three weeks to work through the fixes directly and bring their security up to standard.
Internal projects follow the same varied pattern. With the recently rolled-out Security Tiers project, the goal was to move toward a more targeted approach to security risk across Spotify. Nour was involved in every phase — from design and architecture to implementation — handling the initial detective work, automating information gathering, and assigning products to their appropriate security tier. She describes it as complex work, but notes that touching all phases kept it engaging.
Midday Breaks and Focus Afternoons
Twice a week, her team holds a virtual fika — the Swedish coffee break tradition — to keep connected while remote. There is also a monthly social event, such as a baking challenge, happy hour, or yoga session. She misses the spontaneous “water cooler” conversations from the office, but working from home has its upside: her mother lives in the next block and cares for Leya most days, so Nour can stop by and take her daughter for a walk at lunchtime.
Afternoons are typically less meeting-heavy than mornings, giving her more focus time for coding and reviewing RFCs. She wraps up around 4pm, picks up Leya, and heads to the park. Evenings are for dinner and playtime — or studying. With five weeks left before graduating from NYU’s Cyber Security Master’s program, she is in the final push.
Beyond the Office
When she isn’t studying, Nour and her husband play cards, read, or watch Netflix. She also makes a point of staying in touch with family back in Syria. She credits Jussor, an organization that funded her education in the US, for enabling her path to New York and her role at Spotify, and encourages support for their work.
