Application Security Lead (Remote) - $220-320K

Fast-growing AI/data infrastructure startup building a modern customer data and AI activation platform used by enterprise customers at significant scale. Backed by top-tier investors with $300M+ raised and operating at $100M+ ARR. Fully remote engineering culture with a strong focus on distributed systems, product ownership, and technical excellence.

Compensation

- Base salary: $220-320K

- Competitive equity package

- Remote across US

The Opportunity

This is the companys first dedicated security hire and a rare chance to build the application security function from the ground up. Youll own application and product security end-to-end while partnering directly with engineering leadership on some of the companys most critical infrastructure and scaling challenges.

This is a deeply technical, hands-on IC role — not a compliance or policy-heavy security position. The ideal person will spend the majority of their time in architecture reviews, codebases, threat modeling, and designing secure systems at scale.

What Youll Work On

- Designing and improving multi-tenant isolation for systems processing massive data volumes

- Building authorization and sub-tenant access control models

- Threat modeling and hardening distributed systems and customer-facing APIs

- Improving security architecture across multi-cloud and multi-region infrastructure

- Supporting data residency, privacy, and compliance-related technical controls (GDPR/CCPA)

- Partnering closely with backend and distributed systems engineering teams

- Defining long-term application security best practices and roadmap

Ideal Background

- 6+ years of experience in application/product security engineering

- Previously one of the first security hires (ideally first 1–3) at a SaaS or data infrastructure company

- Strong distributed systems and large-scale infrastructure knowledge

- Experience securing multi-tenant platforms and customer-facing APIs

- Background in cloud security across AWS/GCP/Azure environments

- Able to read production application code and ship security-focused engineering solutions

- Strong preference for engineers with a software engineering or CS foundation

- Open to former/current security managers looking to move back into hands-on IC work

Nice to Have

- Experience with data infrastructure or high-scale event processing systems

- Privacy/security experience involving PII handling, data residency, or GDPR/CCPA controls

- Experience working in fast-growth engineering organizations

- Background at modern B2B SaaS, infrastructure, developer tooling, or security-focused companies

What Theyre NOT Looking For

- Pure offensive security / red team / penetration testing profiles

- Compliance-only or governance-heavy security backgrounds

- Traditional corporate IT security engineers disconnected from product engineering

- Candidates without strong application security and distributed systems depth

Tech Stack

- TypeScript

- Go

- AWS / Azure / GCP

- Multi-cloud distributed infrastructure

Why Candidates Should Join

- First dedicated security hire with massive ownership and visibility

- Opportunity to define security architecture for a rapidly scaling platform

- Work directly with senior engineering leadership

- Company operating at meaningful scale: high-throughput APIs, multi-region infrastructure, enterprise customers, and large-scale data systems

- Strong growth trajectory with top-tier investors and clear long-term upside

Interview Process

- Recruiter Screen

- Security Architecture / Threat Modeling Interview

- Deep Distributed Systems Interview

- Hiring Manager Interview

- Security Program / Cross-Functional Collaboration Interview