Platform Security Engineer

The role

As the platform security engineer, you'll help shape Applied Compute's security posture as we scale. We train custom models on the most sensitive thing our F500 customers have — their proprietary workflows, institutional knowledge, and production data — and we deploy autonomous agents back into those environments. Our customers rely on us being uncompromising about how we handle their data, credentials, and execution boundaries. We've built strong foundations to earn that trust and we're investing heavily in the people and systems to take it to the next level.

This role demands a security practitioner who thinks like an attacker, builds like an engineer, and has the judgment to know where to invest. You'll partner closely with infrastructure, product, and applied research engineers to make security a first-class concern from design through deployment. You'll also help us pioneer what AI-native defense looks like — using our own agent stack to detect, investigate, and pre-empt threats at machine speed. We're building security to defend against the strongest attackers with access to the most capable LLMs.

What you'll do

• Shape the security architecture of our platform end-to-end, from data and credential handling to agent execution and customer deployments

• Lead threat modeling and secure design reviews; identify and prioritize the risks, attack surfaces, and assumptions that matter most

• Drive our offensive security program: continuously stress-test our platform, agents, and pipelines against the kinds of adversaries we should actually expect to face

• Build the tooling, automation, and detections that scale security across the company — including agent-based systems that turn our AI capabilities into a defensive force multiplier

• Partner with engineers across the company to instill secure-by-default practices and remove classes of risk through better design

• Own the security guarantees we present to enterprise customers and their CISOs

• Lead incident response when it matters: detection, containment, communication, and durable fixes

• Build our security teams as we grow

What we're looking for

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in platform security and cyber defense

• Have an exceptional eye for finding flaws others miss, and instinctively ask "how would I break this"

• Lead with a strong grasp of offensive security, anticipating risk from an adversary's perspective rather than checking compliance boxes

• Bring a builder's mindset — you have experience shipping secure software to production

• Have strong judgment to identify the most important security vulnerabilities and put into practice

• Reduce risk through secure design and simplicity; advocate for fundamentals like least privilege, defense-in-depth, and minimizing complexity

• Are energized by ambiguity and high autonomy

Strong candidates also have

• Hands-on experience securing complex cloud and multi-tenant environments, especially ones deployed inside customer VPCs

• Familiarity with AI/agent-specific risks: prompt injection, tool use abuse, data and model exfiltration

• Background in offensive security, vulnerability research, or red teaming against cloud or AI systems

• Experience using LLMs to accelerate security workflows — detection, investigation, triage, or automated response

• Track record taking compliance programs (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP) to completion as engineering efforts

• Previous experience as a founder, security lead, or early engineer at a zero-to-one company

The U.S. base salary range for this full-time position is $190,000–$310,000. Total compensation for this role also includes meaningful equity in a fast-growing startup, along with a comprehensive benefits package designed to support you both personally and professionally. Base salary is determined by a range of factors including individual qualifications, experience, skills, interview performance, market data, and work location. The listed salary range is intended as a guideline and may be adjusted.

Benefits & Logistics

This role is based in San Francisco. We work from our office in the Mission. We offer:

• Competitive compensation and equity

• 100% employer-paid health insurance coverage for you and your family

• Unlimited PTO

• Paid parental leave

• Daily lunches and dinners

• Transportation and relocation support

• 5% 401(k) match

We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the process with you. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. As set forth in Applied Compute’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.