Engineering Tech Lead (Product Security)

Vcluster; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive Salary

Premium Insurance

Flexible Working Schedule

Workplace Flexibility

Job summary

vCluster Labs is seeking an Engineering Tech Lead focused on Product Security to build secure infrastructure software from the ground up. You will lead penetration tests, review threat models, and guide teams toward security-first designs across Kubernetes-based platforms.

This remote, startup-scale role offers a competitive salary, premium insurance, flexible schedule, and workplace flexibility as we power AI clouds and open-source Kubernetes tenant isolation.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in production systems, with strong Kubernetes expertise.
• Experience threat modeling and reviewing designs for production systems, and explaining risk clearly to engineers.
• Experience building and shipping production systems with Go.
• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) preferred.

Responsibilities

• Penetration testing of products and infrastructure with focus on Kubernetes and container isolation.
• Own vulnerability response: triage, prioritize, and fix security issues through to patched release.
• Threat modeling for new features, identifying risks and guiding secure design decisions.
• Participate in code and design reviews with the engineering team.
• Improve security practices across engineering to ship secure defaults.

Skills

Penetration testing

Kubernetes security

Threat modeling

Go production

Tools

Kubernetes

Kubebuilder

client-go

Job description

Join us to Build the Future of AI Infrastructure

We are a VC-backed tech startup in hyper-growth, redefining what's possible at the intersection of AI and cloud-native infrastructure. Our global remote-first culture is built for the best talent, wherever you are.

We're building the infrastructure that powers the world's largest AI Clouds. Filter by department or location to find your place in that work below.

Engineering Tech Lead (Product Security)

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Remote

Department

Compensation

vCluster Labs is looking for an Engineering Tech Lead focused on Product Security to help us build secure infrastructure software from the ground up. You'll bring hands-on penetration testing and deep Kubernetes expertise to our products, while reviewing security-sensitive designs, threat modeling new features, investigating vulnerabilities, and helping teams make sound security decisions as the platform evolves.

As an Engineering Tech Lead (Product Security), your role will include:

Penetration testing: Test our products and infrastructure for exploitable weaknesses, with a focus on Kubernetes and container isolation.

Owning vulnerability response: Triage, prioritize, and fix security issues in our code and dependencies through to a patched release.

Threat modeling new features: Review security-sensitive designs early, identify risks, and help teams make sound security decisions as the platform evolves.

Code and design reviews: Participate in code reviews, design reviews, and technical discussions with the rest of the engineering team.

Improving security practices across engineering: Help engineers build secure defaults into the product.

This role could be a fit for you if you bring:

Hands-on penetration testing: Experience finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in production systems, with deep Kubernetes expertise.

Kubernetes attack surface knowledge: Hands-on experience with container breakout, privilege escalation, RBAC, and policy best practices.

Kubernetes internals depth: Working knowledge of the API server, admission control, RBAC, controllers, and the kubelet, ideally from building controllers or operators with controller-runtime, Kubebuilder, or client-go.

Threat modeling and secure design: Experience threat modeling and reviewing designs for production systems, and explaining risk clearly to other engineers.

Vulnerability ownership: Experience investigating and fixing vulnerabilities in code you work on, including the CVE lifecycle, coordinated disclosure, and patch releases.

Production engineering in Go: Experience building and shipping production systems with Go as a primary language.

CKS certification: Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist.

Startup Experience: Experience at an early-stage organization where you function autonomously and strive towards building something great.

About vCluster Labs

We're the #1 platform for AI infrastructure, trusted by the world's fastest-growing AI cloud builders. We're a venture-backed startup that's raised over $28M from top-tier investors including Khosla Ventures (first investor in OpenAI, GitLab, Stripe, and DoorDash), and we're in a hyper-growth phase looking for motivated people to join our team. Our headquarters are in San Francisco (Salesforce Tower), but our team is distributed around the globe with a remote-first culture.

We give AI Cloud providers and AI factories a hyperscaler-like experience on their own GPU infrastructure. Our platform runs the full stack an operator needs, from bare metal provisioning and node lifecycle management up through managed Kubernetes, Slurm, Ray, and inference clusters, so they can turn raw GPUs into cluster products they can sell in days instead of spending 12+ months building it themselves. Today we power over 100,000 GPUs and 1 million CPUs across 50+ AI clouds and Fortune 500 companies, backed by a team of 40+ infrastructure engineers who build alongside our customers rather than just shipping them software.

We're the company behind vCluster, the open source technology for tenant isolation on Kubernetes, with 11,000+ GitHub stars and 40M+ tenant clusters created since 2021. Open source is part of our DNA. At KubeCon North America 2025, we launched our Infrastructure Tenancy Platform for AI, a Kubernetes-native framework built for running AI, ML, and GPU-intensive workloads anywhere, with an NVIDIA-validated reference architecture for DGX systems.

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive Salary: We offer a competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Premium Insurance: Health, dental, vision, and life Insurance, including plans for you and eligible dependents (benefits vary depending on country).
• Flexible Working Schedule: You have a doctor's appointment or need to head to the supermarket to get groceries at 2pm? We won't have an issue with that. To us, results matter more than clocking in and out at the same time every day.
• Workplace Flexibility: We're very flexible about where you work. We know things can change in life and we're happy to adjust the work environment for you along the way.

Compensation Range: $150K - $200K

Decisive Hiring

Values Driven Culture

Own it. Ship it. Wow them. Our five values aren't a list on our website; they're how decisions get made every day.

As we scale to meet the demands of the world’s largest AI Clouds and enterprises, your career trajectory scales with us.

Impact from Day 1

Your work directly influences our product roadmap and the global cloud-native ecosystem.

We use a data-driven approach to compensation to ensure our team is paid fairly and equitably.

Flexible Working Schedule

You have a doctor's appointment or need to head to the supermarket to get groceries at 2pm? We won't have an issue with that. To us, results matter more than clocking in and out at the same time every day.

Platinum-Level Insurance

Health, dental, vision, and life Insurance including plans for you and eligible dependents (benefits vary depending on country).

Workplace Flexibility

Work isn't a place, it's what you do. As a fully remote, globally distributed team, we give you the flexibility to work from where you are, without the need to relocate or commute. We're designed to support great work, wherever it happens.

What to expect in our hiring process

1

Application Review

We review your resume, track record, and prior work examples to assess your skills and experience against the specific requirements of the role. This step ensures we respect your time by only moving forward if there is a strong potential match.

2

Talent Screening

You will have an initial conversation with a Talent Partner. This discussion focuses on your background, your motivations for seeking a new role, and an introduction to vCluster's culture and mission. It is our chance to get to know you beyond the resume.

3

Department Screening

You will meet with the Hiring Manager for a 45-minute deep dive. This conversation focuses on the specific criteria for the role and gives you a chance to learn more about the team’s goals. This step determines if you move forward to the challenge and panel stages.

4

Our panel consists of a series of 1:1 conversations with future teammates. To ensure fairness and reduce bias, these interviews are structured with standardized questions, where each interviewer focuses on a specific area of expertise related to the role.

5

The Challenge

We believe in seeing your skills in action. Depending on the role, you will complete a work sample, presentation, or technical assessment. This ensures our evaluation is objective and based on practical ability rather than just conversation.

6

Executive Interview & Offer

The final step is a conversation with a member of our executive team. Following a successful debrief, our Talent Partner will extend an offer and welcome you to the team!