Member of Technical Staff, Software Engineer (Security Engineering)

About the role

The RoleWe're hiring a hands-on Staff Security Engineer to build the security foundation for a frontier AI platform serving enterprise customers — owning product/API security, enterprise security architecture, compliance readiness, and incident response as the company scales. This is a senior/staff-level role for someone with 6+ years of experience who has operated as a TL/TLM or staff+ engineer, remains deeply hands-on, and can provide the leadership presence to make delegation and prioritization decisions as Inception grows.

Responsibilities

• Software engineering fundamentals: This is a software engineering role with a security specialization. Expect to spend 70%+ of your time writing code, building security tools, and automating security best practices. You'll need strong command of CS fundamentals, to design, build, and maintain secure software systems.
• 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.

Requirements

You'll be the first/early security leader at a company where security directly affects customer trust, revenue, and product velocity. You'll own and drive the systems, processes, and infrastructure that make Inception secure by default: cloud security, network isolation, access controls, incident response, compliance readiness, secure engineering workflows, and customer-facing security requirements.

Qualifications

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of security engineering experience or equivalent staff-level depth, and have operated as a TL/TLM or staff+ engineer who still ships.
• Hands-on experience with product/API security for customer-facing APIs.
• Driven or owned SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, or comparable compliance and certification programs.
• 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.
• Proficient in Python; comfort with at least one systems language such as Go, Rust, or C++ is a plus.
• Experience with application security, threat modeling, secure SDLC, privacy engineering, or customer-facing security reviews.

Skills

Traditional enterprise/product security execution from an "inverted T" engineer: broad software engineering ability with a deep spike in security.

Benefits

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
Collaborative and inclusive culture

Pay

The annual base salary range for this role is $200,000 – $350,000 USD. Final compensation is determined based on experience, skills, and qualifications.

Schedule

Not specified