Senior Security Engineer

Venn; Toronto; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in a Series A company

Health, dental and vision benefits

Four weeks of vacation

Unlimited sick / personal days

Paid parental leave top up

Weekly lunches and paid dinners

Job summary

Venn, a Canadian fintech, is hiring a Senior Security Engineer to embed security into product design and engineering across applications, cloud, and governance. You will lead incident response, set security policies, and partner with Risk and Compliance to address fraud and regulatory readiness.

This role demands a builder mindset and hands-on experience with AWS, authentication, and secure software delivery.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in security engineering, application security, or software engineering with a strong security focus.
• Track record of building or maturing security at a startup or high-growth company.
• Builder mindset with backend coding skills and bias for shipping fixes over filing tickets.
• Depth in at least two of application security, security operations, and GRC, with comfort across all three.
• Strong understanding of modern authentication and identity, and how attackers target them.
• Hands-on cloud security experience, ideally in AWS.
• Comfort spanning product and corporate security, from code reviews to identity providers.
• Experience leading incident response in a production environment.
• Pragmatic, risk-based judgment and ability to focus on what matters most.
• Clear communication translating security risk for engineers, leadership, and partners.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive Venn’s security roadmap, prioritizing risks that matter most to the business.
• Build security into the product with design and code reviews for money-moving features.
• Protect customer identities and accounts across web, mobile apps, APIs, and partner integrations.
• Strengthen prevention, detection, and response across cloud environments and lead incidents to post-mortems.
• Partner with Risk and Compliance to stay ahead of fraud and emerging threats.
• Automate security across the development lifecycle and infrastructure, including vulnerability management and pentesting.
• Protect sensitive data with strong data security and privacy controls.
• Maintain security across people, devices and internal systems; foster a security-aware culture.
• Manage third-party security risk with vendors and banking/partner integrations.
• Set guardrails for safe use of AI and agentic tools.
• Drive security governance including policies, security reviews, SOC 2 and PCI DSS readiness.

Skills

Security engineering

Application security

Backend coding (Java/Kotlin)

Cloud security (AWS)

Incident response

Communication

Risk assessment

Tools

AWS

Job description

About Venn

Venn is building the business banking Canadian companies should already have. For decades, business owners here have banked with institutions that were slow, expensive and not built for them. Venn gives them multi-currency accounts, global transfers, corporate cards and AI finance tools in one place, so they spend less time on their finances and more on their business.

Our founders both worked at Revolut before starting Venn and were raised by small business owners. Today more than 15,000 Canadian businesses run on Venn. We're the fastest-growing B2B fintech in Canada, and we ranked 10th among Canada's fastest-growing companies by revenue in 2026. Backed by Left Lane Capital, Gradient, Intact Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital we're Series A and have raised $26.5M to date.

About the Role

As a Senior Security Engineer, you’ll help shape how Venn keeps its platform, customers, and team secure. You’ll work across application security, security operations, and governance, risk and compliance, partnering closely with engineering, product, and Risk and Compliance. Your focus is building security into how we design and ship, so it scales with the business without slowing it down.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Define and drive Venn’s security roadmap, prioritizing the risks that matter most to the business.
• Build security into the product by partnering with engineering and product on design and code reviews, especially for features that move money.
• Protect customer identities and accounts across our web and mobile apps, APIs, and partner integrations.
• Strengthen prevention, detection, and response across our cloud environment, and lead incidents from triage through post-mortem.
• Partner with Risk and Compliance to stay ahead of fraud, abuse, and emerging threats.
• Automate security across the development lifecycle and infrastructure, including vulnerability management and regular penetration testing, so it scales without slowing teams down.
• Protect sensitive customer and company data with strong data security and privacy controls.
• Keep our people, devices, and internal systems secure, and build a security-aware culture across Venn.
• Manage third-party security risk, from vendors to our banking, card, and payment partners.
• Set practical guardrails for the safe use of AI and agentic tools across the company.
• Drive security governance, including policies, bank and partner security reviews, and SOC 2 [and PCI DSS] readiness.

What You’ll Need

• 7+ years of experience in security engineering, application security, or software engineering with a strong security focus.
• A track record of building or significantly maturing security at a startup or high-growth company.
• A builder’s mindset, with strong backend coding skills (Java or Kotlin preferred) and a bias for shipping fixes over filing tickets.
• Depth in at least two of application security, security operations, and governance, risk and compliance, and comfort working across all three.
• Strong understanding of modern authentication and identity, and how attackers target them.
• Hands-on cloud security experience, ideally in AWS.
• Comfort spanning both product and corporate security, from code reviews to devices and identity providers.
• Experience leading incident response in a production environment.
• Pragmatic, risk-based judgment and the ability to focus on what matters most.
• Clear communication that translates security risk for engineers, leadership, and partners.

Bonus Points

• Experience at a fintech, in payments, or in another regulated industry.
• Experience with fraud, anti-abuse, or KYC/KYB systems.
• Experience with SOC 2 or PCI DSS audits and bank partner security reviews.
• Experience with detection engineering and infrastructure as code.
• Familiarity with the security risks of AI and LLM-based tools.
• Certifications such as OSCP, OSWE, or GIAC.

How we work.

We raise the bar, own the outcome, challenge assumptions, win as one and move fast. In practice that means honest feedback, continuous iteration, and decisions grounded in data.

What we offer

• Equity in a Series A company, so you share in the growth you help build.
• Health, dental and vision benefits from your first day.
• Four weeks of vacation.
• Unlimited sick / personal days
• Paid parental leave top up
• Weekly lunches and paid dinners when work goes late

This posting is for an existing vacancy. We use AI tools in our process but people make every hiring decision. Venn is an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants without regard to any characteristic protected by law. Accommodations are available at any stage on request. We only contact candidates from an @venn.ca email or Ashby and will never ask for payment or banking details.

If you want to build the business banking Canadian companies run on, Venn is the place to do it. Meet most of the requirements but not every one?