Partner 20, Staff Engineer, Security Automation

About the role

Founded in Silicon Valley in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) is a venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. We are stage agnostic. We invest in seed to venture to growth-stage technology companies, across AI, bio + healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, and companies building toward American dynamism. a16z has $100B+ under management across multiple funds. We’ve established a team that is defined by respect for the entrepreneur and the company-building process; we know what it’s like to be in the founder’s shoes. We’ve invested in companies like Anduril, Airbnb, Coinbase, Cursor, Databricks, Deel, Figma, GitHub, Roblox, SpaceX, and Stripe. Our team is at the forefront of new technology, helping founders and their companies impact and change the world.

Responsibilities

• Build the connective tissue across the security tools the org relies on — SIEM, vulnerability scanners, EDR, identity, asset management, ticketing — and centralize the data they generate into a single picture the team can act on
• Use AI as a first-class building block - LLM-augmented analysis, agentic automations, AI-assisted summarization - and design for compounding leverage, not one-off scripts
• Build the frameworks and dashboards that unify asset inventory, vulnerability posture, exposure reviews, and compliance evidence across systems
• Take the bigger automation problems off the team's plate — vulnerability management at scale, asset hygiene, access reviews, and the workflows that span multiple tools
• Raise the rest of the security team's leverage with AI - share patterns, ship tooling others use, and make it easy for security engineers and IR engineers to add AI to their own work

Requirements

• 5+ years of security engineering experience, with automation and tool-building as a core part of your work — not a side project
• Builder mindset — comfortable shipping production-quality security tooling, with strong Python or similar
• Hands-on experience building with LLMs or AI APIs — integrating AI into workflows, not just using AI-powered products
• Broad security fundamentals across cloud security, detection engineering, identity, and vulnerability management. Depth in one is fine; breadth across many is required
• Understanding of AI security risks: prompt injection, data exfiltration from LLM workflows, agent identity boundaries, and model risk
• Experience translating technical security concepts, decisions, and trade-offs into terms non-technical audiences across the firm can act on

Qualifications

• Low ego, high empathy, and the capacity to collaborate across security, engineering, and IT without creating friction

Skills

• Strong Python or similar programming skills
• Experience with LLMs or AI APIs
• Understanding of AI security risks
• Ability to translate technical security concepts to non-technical audiences

Benefits

• Actual starting pay may vary based on a range of factors which can include experience, skills, and scope
• Eligible to participate in the a16z carry program and various discretionary bonus programs
• Benefit and perquisite plans including health, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, 401K plan, vacation, and sick leave

Pay

The anticipated salary range for this role is between $243,000 - $284,000, actual starting pay may vary based on a range of factors which can include experience, skills, and scope.

Schedule

This role is eligible to work 2 days a week in the a16z San Francisco, CA office.