Coleton Pierson

I lead security architecture at Agoda, shaping how we protect our systems across every IT domain at global scale. My focus is applying timeless security principles to modern platform engineering. Instead of relying on friction or red tape, I work with engineering teams to embed automated safeguards directly into our core platforms. The result is deep enterprise defense, easy compliance, and complete freedom for engineers to innovate at high velocity.

I started out at Praetorian as one of its earliest employees, joining while the company was still a handful of people and helping it grow to a team of more than fifty. There I ran penetration tests and security assessments for Fortune 500 companies and venture-backed startups, built the cloud security service line, and later moved into product engineering to build the company's security platform. One of those clients was Booking Holdings, and I was on the team that ran Agoda's first NIST Cybersecurity Framework assessment on site in Bangkok. A dinner with Agoda's CISO while I was on vacation in Thailand turned into a job offer, and I never really left.

At Agoda I began on the incident response team, designing the automation and alerting platform the team still runs on. From there I moved into securing the private cloud while it was in its infancy, then broadened to security architecture across the whole company. Today I set the long-term security vision, own the technical decisions behind our critical initiatives, and still get my hands dirty writing proofs of concept.

I grew up in Texas and studied computer science at The University of Texas at Austin. I have lived in Europe and across the United States, and Bangkok has been home since 2019. Outside work I host a regular meetup for CISOs and security leaders across Thailand, and I have helped a number of people from the West find their footing in the region's security industry.