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Member of Technical Staff, Security Engineering

Inception

Bay Area$200k–350kOn-site4w ago
Employment
Full-time
Seniority
Staff

About the role

  • Enterprise security architecture & threat modeling. Design secure systems and guide backend, product, and platform engineers on security architecture and threat modeling for Inception's customer-facing API and enterprise deployments.
  • API / product security. Lead proactive threat protection for a public API product handling enterprise usage, analogous to companies exposing API surfaces like ChatGPT or Claude.
  • Compliance, certifications, and enterprise readiness. Lead or materially drive security compliance and certifications, including SOC 2 (including ongoing Type 2 readiness) and ISO 27001, plus data privacy and security best practices.
  • VPC, GDPR, incident response, and 24/7 security coverage. Operate as a staff-level "all-in-one specialist" across VPC design, network isolation, GDPR, incident response, security monitoring, and operational visibility for production systems.
  • Secure infrastructure and tooling. Build and maintain secure infrastructure, automation, and internal tools across Inception's product, platform, and enterprise systems — improving developer velocity while raising the security baseline.
  • Engineering practices. Establish and promote secure development, code review, release management, vulnerability management, and incident response practices.
  • Pragmatic partnership. Review systems and architectures for security risks and help engineers make pragmatic tradeoffs. Contribute beyond a narrow security lane when needed, especially across backend, infrastructure, platform, and developer tooling.


  • You have 6+ years of security engineering experience or equivalent staff-level depth, and have operated as a TL/TLM or staff+ engineer who still ships.
  • You've built security for enterprise-facing products, APIs, infrastructure, or compliance-heavy environments, and have worked with customers who have procurement, compliance, or customer-trust requirements.
  • You have hands-on experience with product/API security for customer-facing APIs.
  • You have driven or owned SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, or comparable compliance and certification programs.
  • You've built or owned internal security systems, privacy infrastructure, identity and access management, encryption, cloud security controls, mTLS, policy systems, or security services exposed via APIs.
  • You're proficient in Python; comfort with at least one systems language such as Go, Rust, or C++ is a plus.
  • You're fluent with modern software development, CI/CD, deployment automation, Kubernetes/Docker, infrastructure as code, and cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure.
  • You can operate independently in a fast-moving startup without a large security organization around you, and bring startup pace rather than big-tech-only conservatism.
  • You partner with fast-moving engineering teams as an enabler, not a blocker, with strong empathy for customer experience and developer velocity.
  • BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.


  • Experience as an early or founding security engineer at a startup or fast-growing engineering organization, helping scale towards 100+ org size.
  • Experience preparing companies for enterprise customers, security reviews, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, or similar programs.
  • Background in backend engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure, or DevOps before specializing in security.
  • Experience building security tooling, developer platforms, or automation that engineers actually use.
  • Familiarity with monitoring, observability, vulnerability management, and incident response tooling.
  • Experience securing AI/ML infrastructure, GPU-intensive workloads, inference pipelines, serving APIs, or large-scale cloud environments. (Direct AI-specific security experience is not required.)
  • Experience with application security, threat modeling, secure SDLC, privacy engineering, or customer-facing security reviews.

Compensation

  • Work with World-Class Talent: Collaborate with the inventors of diffusion models and leading AI researchers
  • Shape Foundational Technology: Your decisions will influence how the next generation of AI products are built and used
  • Immediate Impact: Join at the ground floor where your contributions directly shape product direction and company trajectory
  • Competitive salary and equity in a rapidly growing startup
  • Flexible vacation and paid time off (PTO)
  • Health, dental, and vision insurance
  • 401k match
  • Catered meals (breakfast, lunch, & dinner)
  • Commuter subsidies
  • A collaborative and inclusive culture

Perks & benefits

  • 401k
  • Vision Insurance
  • Unlimited Vacation
  • Paid Time Off
  • Pension Matching
  • Equity Compensation

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