Founding Security Engineer
Location: San Francisco, CA — Remote
Employment: Full-time
Experience: 7–15+ years
Base Salary: $230,000–$300,000 + meaningful equity
Visa: Open to H-1B transfers and TN Visa candidates
About the Role
We are looking for a Founding Security Engineer to become the first dedicated security hire at a rapidly growing technology company.
This is a highly hands-on, high-ownership role for someone who can build a security program from the ground up while working closely with engineering and infrastructure teams. You will report directly to the CTO and have significant influence over security architecture, product development, infrastructure, and enterprise security.
The ideal candidate has a strong software engineering or computer science foundation and transitioned into security engineering. You should be comfortable reading code, identifying vulnerabilities, threat modeling systems, securing cloud infrastructure, and partnering directly with engineers.
What You'll Do
- Build and define the company's security architecture from the ground up across the product, infrastructure, and AI/LLM pipeline.
- Own the overall security program as the first dedicated security engineer.
- Work directly with engineering teams to identify vulnerabilities and implement secure-by-design practices.
- Conduct threat modeling, vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and risk prioritization.
- Review application code and infrastructure for security vulnerabilities.
- Design and strengthen cloud security architecture and multi-tenant isolation.
- Partner with infrastructure teams on multi-region security and data residency requirements.
- Manage penetration tests, vulnerability scans, remediation efforts, and security tooling.
- Develop practical security policies and processes that support both security and compliance.
- Own internal IT security, including devices, access management, identity, and permissions.
- Support enterprise security reviews, customer questionnaires, audits, and technical security discussions.
- Help define and evolve the security roadmap as the company and customer base scale.
- Potentially build and lead a security team as the organization grows.
Required Qualifications
- 7–15+ years of experience in security engineering, software engineering, or a combination of both.
- Strong software engineering or computer science background, with a transition into security engineering.
- Hands-on experience across application security and infrastructure/cloud security.
- Experience building or significantly developing a security program from scratch.
- Strong understanding of threat modeling and vulnerability assessment.
- Experience with penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, remediation, and risk prioritization.
- Ability to read and review production code and identify security vulnerabilities.
- Strong understanding of cloud security architecture.
- Experience with multi-tenant environments and isolation.
- Ability to work directly with engineers and influence secure architecture and development practices.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical security issues to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
What Makes This Opportunity Exciting:
Founding Security Ownership
You will be the first dedicated security engineer, giving you the opportunity to build the security function from the ground up rather than inheriting an established program.
Direct CTO Exposure
You will work directly with the CTO and have significant visibility into technical and business decisions.
Meaningful Security Challenges
The company operates at significant scale with sensitive customer and user data, creating complex challenges across application security, cloud infrastructure, identity, data protection, and multi-tenant environments.
High-Caliber Engineering Team
You'll work alongside highly accomplished engineers from top technology, AI, fintech, and infrastructure companies.
Competitive Compensation
$230K–$300K base salary plus meaningful equity.
Long-Term Growth
Start as a senior individual contributor with broad ownership, with the opportunity to expand your scope and potentially build a security team as the company grows.