Head of Security & Compliance

Sarah Smith Fund; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive Compensation

Professional Growth Opportunities

Collaborative Environment

Job summary

Sarah Smith Fund, located in San Francisco, is seeking an Application Security Lead to build security tooling and mentor engineers. The role involves ensuring data privacy and driving customer trust through compliance initiatives like SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

Ideal candidates have over 5 years of experience in progressive security roles, strong fundamentals in secure SDLC, and familiarity with fintech or banking environments. Enjoy competitive compensation and an opportunity to shape the future of banking through AI.

Qualifications

• Proven track record of owning SOC 2 Type II and/or ISO 27001 compliance.
• Ability to develop lightweight security policies and data governance frameworks.
• Experience leading incidents end to end & driving the fixes that follow.

Responsibilities

• Build security tooling & processes for engineers.
• Manage and mentor application security engineers.
• Secure agent execution surface, ensuring data privacy.
• Drive customer trust through compliance initiatives.
• Lead incident response and detection efforts.

Skills

5+ years in progressive security roles

Strong fundamentals in secure SDLC

Cloud security (AWS/GCP)

Web security

DevSecOps practices

Experience in fintech or banking

Job description

Why Casca?

Casca is building AGI for banking. We’re replacing decades‑old legacy systems with AI‑native technology that automates 90% of the manual work humans once had to do.

What you'll do:

• Build security tooling & processes that engineers actually use. Create internal mechanisms for appsec, identity and access management, and threat detection that naturally integrate into how the team ships.
• Manage, mentor, and grow our team of application security engineers. Mature our Secure SDLC, threat modeling, and vulnerability management processes to ensure our security posture matches our growing responsibility.
• Secure the agent execution surface. Partner with Engineering and Product to establish robust security architecture for our AI‑driven workflows, ensuring strict data privacy, mitigating AI‑specific vulnerabilities, and maintaining safe agentic identity.
• Drive customer trust. Partner with go‑to‑market and legal teams to support compliance and customer‑driven initiatives. Own and expand our compliance roadmap (SOC 2, SOC 1, ISO 27001), while keeping guardrails pragmatic for a fast‑paced startup.
• Lead incident response and detection. Build the detection pipeline, act as the primary commander, and turn every event into systemic improvements.

What you'll bring:

• 5+ years in progressive security roles, with at least 2+ years at a B2B tech, fintech, or highly regulated SaaS company.
• Strong fundamentals in secure SDLC, cloud security (AWS/GCP), Web security, and DevSecOps practices.
• Ability to develop lightweight, durable security policies, access controls, and data governance frameworks. A track record of building "practical security, not checkbox theater."
• Nice to have: Experience securing LLM usage for both coding and in product use cases, and mitigating risks specific to agentic systems (e.g., unauthorized actions taken by autonomous agents, prompt injection, and data poisoning).
• Proven track record of owning SOC 2 Type II and/or ISO 27001 compliance.
• You can review a penetration test, debate architecture with a lead engineer, and present to a bank's CISO... all in the same day
• You’re comfortable with incident response - calm, methodical, and effective under pressure; experience leading incidents end to end & driving the fixes that follow.
• You thrive in ambiguity, know how to ruthlessly prioritize fixes to eliminate the highest risks first, and understand the balance between security and business velocity.
• Experience in fintech or banking

What you'll get:

• Impact & Ownership: A unique opportunity to shape the future of banking through AI, owning end‑to‑end product initiatives.
• Collaborative Environment: Work alongside a talented and passionate team that values continuous improvement and knowledge sharing.
• Competitive Compensation: Includes salary, benefits, and potential equity in a fast‑growing startup.
• Professional Growth: Access to resources and mentorship to expand your skill set, influence strategy, and accelerate your career.
• Culture of Innovation: We encourage risk‑taking, learning from failures, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in fintech.

As an early‑stage company building at the frontier of AI, we work with high intensity and commitment. While schedules can vary by role/team, many weeks will demand extra focus, flexibility and time particularly during major launches and high impact sprints. We’re seeking those who are aligned to and able to commit to that expectation.