Distributed Systems Security Engineer

Cerebras; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Cerebras Systems is seeking a Distributed Systems Security Engineer to strengthen security controls across our on-prem and cloud clusters. You will drive hardening efforts, model threats, and collaborate with platform, infrastructure, and hardware teams to deliver secure, scalable architectures.

The role demands deep hands-on engineering experience in heterogeneous compute environments, extensive Kubernetes hardening, and clear communication to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 8-10 years of experience in heterogeneous compute environments, with strong Kubernetes hardening and general network security expertise.
• Proven ability to implement secure designs across on-prem and cloud environments.
• Excellent written communication for explaining security concepts to non-specialists.

Responsibilities

• Define core security requirements for distributed systems environments, including secure boot and workload identity in Kubernetes pods.
• Partner with platform, infrastructure, networking, and hardware teams to close security gaps and deliver end-to-end solutions.
• Develop threat models for cluster stack components and specify trust boundaries.

Skills

Kubernetes hardening

Heterogeneous compute

Network security

On-prem/cloud

Security communication

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

Cerebras Systems builds the world's largest AI chip, 56 times larger than GPUs. This architecture allows Cerebras to deliver industry-leading training and inference speeds; over 10 times faster than GPU-based hyperscale cloud inference services. This order of magnitude increase in speed is transforming the user experience of AI applications, unlocking real-time iteration and increasing intelligence via additional agentic computation.Cerebras works with the leading model labs, global enterprises, and cutting-edge AI-native startups. OpenAI recently announced a multi-year partnership with Cerebras, to deploy 750 megawatts of scale, transforming key workloads with ultra high-speed inference.Cerebras is seeking a Distributed Systems Security Engineer to help build out the next generation of security controls and services in our on-prem and cloud clusters.In this role you will be responsible for driving hardening efforts across every layer of the cluster stack, covering a range of systems at the bare metal, virtualized, and k8s containerized levels.The ideal candidate brings a combination of wide breadth of knowledge on a variety of systems and networking topics, a pragmatic and results-driven outlook on security, and the flexibility and attention to detail to work in a fast-paced development environment without compromising our security standards.

Responsibilities

• Define core security requirements for distributed systems environments, covering everything from secure boot configurations to workload identity in k8s pods
• Partner with platform, infrastructure, networking, and hardware teams to identify gaps and deliver end-to-end solutions improving the overall security maturity of the environment
• Develop threat models for each part of the cluster stack, outlining trust boundaries and the interplay between first and third-party mechanisms
• Work with engineering leads and architects to bake secure design in from the beginning
• Balance engineering outcomes with security controls, enabling the company to deliver securely quickly
• Document security posture and strategy for technical and nontechnical audiences from both 1p and 3p perspectives

Skills and Qualifications

• 8-10 years of experience with heterogenous compute environments, kubernetes hardening, and general networked system security
• 10+ years with HPCs (high performance clusters)
• Strong hands-on engineering abilities in on-prem and cloud environments
• Ability to work in fragmented ecosystems, hardening both modern k8s deployments as well as bare metal instances
• Familiarity with AWS, Kubernetes, and distributed compute systems a plus
• Strong written communication skills, with the ability to make security concepts approachable for non-specialists.

Why Join Cerebras

People who are serious about software make their own hardware. At Cerebras, we have built a breakthrough architecture that is unlocking new opportunities for the AI industry. With dozens of model releases and rapid growth, we’ve reached an inflection point in our