Security Software Engineer

We've partnered with a fast-growing, AI-native startup on a high-impact opportunity: their first Security Software Engineer. This is a true greenfield role where you'll own the security vision from day one, building the foundation for how the company designs, defends, and ships secure software and AI systems at scale.You'll architect security from the ground up, embedding automated defenses directly into the development lifecycle, securing AI/ML pipelines, and driving a GitOps-native approach to security across the org. This is a rare opportunity to shape security culture and tooling at a company building cutting-edge AI products, with the autonomy and impact of a founding hire.What You'll DoDefine and lead the security strategy and roadmap from the ground upBuild automated, developer-friendly security tooling and guardrailsSecure AI/ML pipelines, including model training, deployment, and inference infrastructureChampion a GitOps security model, embedding security checks directly into CI/CDPartner closely with engineering teams to remediate risks and build a "secure-by-design" cultureMust-Haves5+ years in AppSec or InfraSec, ideally in high-growth, fast-paced environmentsStrong hands-on coding skills (Python, Go, C/C++, or Java) - you can ship production code, not just review itDeep AWS security expertise; GCP/Azure experience a strong plusAn attacker's mindset paired with a builder's collaborative approach to remediationComfort with modern observability and a "you build it, you run it" philosophyExperience integrating agentic AI workflows into the dev lifecycle for real-time security feedbackNice-to-HavesExperience securing AI/ML workloads: prompt injection defense, model weight protectionStrong Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) expertise, especially multi-tenant security and resource isolationLogisticsLocation: On-site in San Francisco, CACompensation: $260K–$380K base + equityVisa sponsorship and transfers available