Founding Security Engineer

Bonfirevc; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Salary & equity

Insurance: Medical/Dental/Vision

Lunch stipend

Job summary

Axle is hiring a Founding Security Engineer in New York City to own the security of a platform trusted by major banks. This hands-on role focuses on hardening cloud infrastructure, application logic, and core systems, with a proactive approach to finding and fixing vulnerabilities.

You will lead security architecture, drive compliance initiatives such as SOC 2, and collaborate with engineering to ship secure features. The role offers outsized ownership in a fast-growing startup environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in security engineering, ideally in fintech or regulated industries.
• Deep experience with AWS security, IAM, VPC design, and cloud-native tooling.
• Hands-on with SIEM, vulnerability management, and pen testing.
• Comfortable writing code — you can read and review production software.
• Experience with SOC 2 or similar compliance frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end security architecture across cloud infrastructure, APIs, and application layer.
• Drive SOC 2, penetration testing, and enterprise compliance programs.
• Build and maintain security monitoring, alerting, and incident response.
• Partner directly with engineering to ship features that are secure by design.
• Be the security voice in every product and infrastructure decision.

Skills

Security engineering

AWS security

IAM

VPC design

Penetration testing

SIEM

Code reading

SOC 2

Tools

SOC 2 tooling

Job description

About Axle

Axle is building the intelligent infrastructure for how capital moves on Wall Street.

Trillions of dollars in institutional capital get directed through a web of relationships, meetings, and decisions that still run on spreadsheets, email chains, and tools built over a decade ago. This is the layer where markets actually move, and we're at the forefront of rebuilding it.

We have replaced all of it with one platform, powered by AI agents that strip out the manual work and give bankers strategic leverage. Axle is quickly becoming the operating system for Wall Street's most important relationships.

The investment banks already running on Axle treat us as mission-critical, and we are just getting started. The problems we work on are high-stakes, data-dense, and critical to how markets function.

Our founding team blends Wall Street experience with engineering excellence, drawing on backgrounds at firms like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AWS, and Capital One. We lived the problem firsthand and built the platform we wished existed. Our tight-knit team in NYC is backed by top-tier VCs and former leaders from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel.

About the role

As our Founding Security Engineer, you'll own the security of a platform that major banks trust with their most sensitive capital markets data. This is a hands-on engineering role: hardening our cloud infrastructure, application logic, and core systems — finding and fixing vulnerabilities before anyone else does.

What you'll do

• Own end-to-end security architecture across cloud infrastructure, APIs, and application layer
• Drive SOC 2, penetration testing, and enterprise compliance programs
• Build and maintain security monitoring, alerting, and incident response
• Partner directly with engineering to ship features that are secure by design
• Be the security voice in every product and infrastructure decision

What we're looking for

• 5+ years in security engineering, ideally in fintech or regulated industries
• Deep experience with AWS security, IAM, VPC design, and cloud-native tooling
• Hands-on with SIEM, vulnerability management, and pen testing
• Comfortable writing code — you can read and review production software
• Experience with SOC 2 or similar compliance frameworks

Why this role at Axle

Security isn't a back-office function here — it's core to how we win and keep enterprise customers. You'll define how security works at Axle and build the systems that carry it forward. The data is consequential, the ownership is real, and the scope grows with the company.

What to know

We are a startup serving institutions that operate under real pressure, and sometimes that pressure lands on us. There will be times you work long hours or respond outside classic windows because a customer or a deal demands it. We balance a lot at once, and we ask everyone to carry real weight. In exchange, you get outsized ownership, a steep learning curve, and a seat at the center of how markets work. We're in our Flatiron office in New York five days a week because we build faster together.

Benefits & perks

• PTO: Unlimited
• Salary & equity: Competitive compensation with real upside
• Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision — fully covered
• Eats & commute: Lunch and commute stipend, plus office snacks and drinks