Application Security Engineer, Generative AI

Liftoff; Colorado Springs (CO); Remote; USD 184,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Wellness stipends

Equity

Job summary

Liftoff is seeking a seasoned security engineer to own application security for GenAI, Creative GenAI, and emerging businesses. You will drive secure design, perform threat modeling, and build automation while collaborating with cross-functional teams.

You will triage vulnerabilities, guide remediation with engineering, and contribute to cloud/security initiatives across Liftoff's stack. Remote-first with US/Canada hubs and travel as needed.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of relevant experience in security engineering or software engineering.
• Strong background in secure software design, application and API security, and threat modeling.
• Experience writing production-quality security tooling and automation.

Responsibilities

• Perform design reviews, threat modeling, and security assessments for GenAI and related platforms.
• Triage security issues, prioritize vulnerabilities, and coordinate remediation with engineering teams.
• Develop and maintain security automation tools and monitoring.
• Assess vendors and AI tools for security controls and use cases.
• Contribute across application, cloud, and infrastructure security.
• Participate in on-call and incident-response rotations.

Skills

Go

Python

Clojure

JavaScript

Threat modeling

Security engineering

Code reviews

Incident response

Tools

Go

Job description

Liftoff is a leading AI-powered performance marketing platform for the mobile app economy. Our end-to-end technology stack helps app marketers acquire and retain high-value users, while enabling publishers to maximize revenue across programmatic and direct demand.

Liftoff's solutions, including Accelerate, Direct, Monetize, Intelligence, and Vungle Exchange, support over 6,600 mobile businesses across 74 countries in sectors such as gaming, social, finance, ecommerce, and entertainment. The Liftoff Security team protects Liftoff's customers, users, and employees. We architect Liftoff's security posture, build the tools and systems that defend it, and partner with engineering teams as they ship new products and features. Our work spans the entire stack — infrastructure, web, mobile, and IT — and we approach security from a software engineering standpoint, scaling our impact through automation and well-designed tools. This individual contributor role reports to the Director of Security and owns application security for GenAI, Creative GenAI, and emerging businesses. Application security is the primary focus; you will also contribute across cloud and infrastructure security, support Accelerate and MX as priorities change, and share the team's on-call and incident-response work.

Establish secure software development standards and integrate security into engineering design and development.

Create self-service paths for engineering teams to build and deploy securely through documented review workflows, reusable tools, and secure design patterns.

Perform design and code reviews, threat modeling, and security assessments for GenAI, Creative GenAI, and emerging businesses, including sandbox design and isolation.

Triage incoming security issues, prioritize vulnerabilities by risk, and work with engineering teams through timely remediation and verification.

Assess vendors and AI tools to ensure their security controls and product features support secure employee use.

Share the security team's on-call and incident-response rotation, including occasional off-hours response.

Conduct blameless post-incident reviews, document findings, and follow through on remediation.

Build maintainable security tools and automation, including an AI-assisted code-security triage pilot that produces actionable findings at a false-positive rate engineering will accept.

Partner with Detection & Response to turn application-security findings and threat models into detection improvements and response guidance.

Contribute across application, cloud, and infrastructure security as priorities change, including Accelerate and MX.

5+ years of relevant experience in security engineering or software engineering.

Excellent judgment in prioritizing security efforts using a risk-based approach.

Experience partnering with cross-functional teams to deliver security improvements and help engineers choose practical fixes.

Write production-quality code for security tools and automation, review pull requests, and navigate large, unfamiliar codebases.

Strong understanding of secure software design, application and API security, authentication and authorization, threat modeling, and code review.

Experience assessing cloud and infrastructure security and contributing beyond a primary application-security specialty.

Practical software engineering habits: testing, observability, version control, peer code review, continuous integration, and blameless postmortems.

Strong technical writing: design documents, proposals, runbooks, and post-incident reviews that support engineering decisions. Explain security risks and tradeoffs clearly in writing and conversation.

Experience with Go, Python, Clojure, or JavaScript; ability to work across languages matters more than a specific language.

Experience securing GenAI applications, designing sandboxes, or evaluating AI-assisted security tools and their output.

Experience scaling cloud security or working with high-velocity software engineering teams, mobile advertising, or other high-volume SaaS environments.

Diverse & Challenging Projects : Engage in various domains including product security, vendor security, corporate security, and infrastructure security.

Large-Scale Systems & Technical Challenges : Tackle complex security challenges across Liftoff's infrastructure and applications.

Hands-On Technical work:

Come join our team and help shape the future of the mobile app ecosystem. This role is eligible for full-time remote work in one of our entities/states and Canada: CA, CO, ID, IL, FL, GA, MA, MI, MN, MO, NJ, NV, NY, OR, PA, TX, UT, and WA.

We are a remote-first company with US hubs in Redwood City, Los Angeles, and New York City.

Travel Expectations:

We offer several opportunities for in-person team gatherings, including but not limited to project meetings, regional meetups, and company-wide events. These gatherings provide essential opportunities for collaboration, communication, and team building.

SF Bay Area, Los Angeles/Orange County, NYC, Seattle : $200,000 - $250,000 plus bonus

184,000 - $220,000 plus bonus

We're shaping the future of the mobile app ecosystem—join us and help accelerate what's next.

Liftoff's compensation strategy includes competitive salaries, equity, and benefits designed to support employee well-being and performance. Benefits may include medical coverage, wellness stipends, and additional perks based on your country of residence.

We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and applicants regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, age, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.