Platform Security Engineer

Outset; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Outset is seeking an experienced Platform Security Engineer to harden the security of its AWS-based systems and codebase. You will partner with engineering and security teams to identify risks, improve architecture, investigate incidents, and implement practical security controls across cloud, application, and infrastructure layers.

You will lead platform investigations during security and privacy incidents, guide containment and remediation, and help shape the organization’s SIEM detections and

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience in application security, cloud security, infrastructure security, or security-focused SRE.
• Experience securing production systems in AWS, including identity, networking, logging, data protection, and common cloud attack paths.
• Strong working knowledge of Terraform and infrastructure-as-code security practices.
• Ability to assess security across both infrastructure and application layers.
• Experience reviewing architecture or source code for security vulnerabilities and design weaknesses.
• Familiarity with authentication, authorization, and data-security risks.
• Experience investigating complex events using logs and telemetry.
• Experience writing or tuning SIEM detection rules.
• Ability to distinguish meaningful signals from noisy telemetry.
• Experience evaluating penetration-test findings and remediation.
• Strong scripting or software-development skills for security tooling.

Responsibilities

• Identify, assess, and remediate security risks across AWS infra, Terraform code, app architecture, and product code.
• Partner with engineering to design secure systems and integrate security into development workflows.
• Participate in security reviews of RFC/PRR docs, giving actionable feedback on architecture and risk.
• Review changes requiring additional security scrutiny; coordinate penetration tests and remediation.
• Lead platform investigations during security/privacy incidents with the Head of Security.
• Analyze telemetry to determine incident scope, impact, and root cause.
• Translate findings into containment, remediation, and improved detections, plus documentation.
• Contribute to SIEM rule design, tuning, and maintenance for the platform.
• Improve logging/telemetry to detect threats and support investigations.
• Develop security tooling and automation; partner with SRE on IAM, secrets, and hardening.
• Help establish practical security standards that balance risk with product velocity.

Skills

AWS security

Terraform IaC

SIEM & logging

Incident response

Security tooling

SRE collaboration

Threat modeling

Scripting

Code security

Tools

Terraform

AWS

SIEM tooling

Job description

Outset invented a better way to do research: AI-powered user interviews.

Global brands like Hubspot, Microsoft, Uber and Nestle use Outset to achieve deeper, qualitative insights about their users at unprecedented speed and scale.

The research industry is massive (>$140B and growing) and ripe for disruption. Incumbents are outdated, slow, and burdened by high-cost services. That's our opportunity.

Outset is backed by top Silicon Valley investors and raised a $30M Series B in December 2025—less than six months after our Series A—led by Radical Ventures with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture arm), 8VC, Y Combinator, and Adverb Ventures.

The raise follows a breakout year, with our business growing 8x as enterprise customers across industries adopt our category, AI‑moderated research, as the new standard for understanding people.

We’re a tight‑knit team serving some of the world’s largest enterprises.

We are looking for an experienced Platform Security Engineer to harden the security of the systems that power our business and products.

You will help us secure both our AWS infrastructure and our code base, partnering directly with engineering and other security teams to identify risk, improve architecture, investigate incidents, and build practical security controls. The role combines application, cloud and infrastructure security, detection engineering, and incident investigation.

During security and privacy incidents, you will serve as the lead technical investigator for the platform. You will work closely with the Incident Commander (Head of Security), to determine what happened, understand the impact, preserve relevant evidence, and guide containment and remediation.

Responsibilities

• Identify, assess, and help remediate security risks across our AWS infrastructure, Terraform code, application architecture, and product code.

• Partner with engineering teams to design secure systems and incorporate security into normal development and operational workflows.

• Participate in security reviews of RFC and PRR documentation, providing clear, actionable feedback on architecture, data flows, access controls, abuse cases, and technical risk.

• Review application and infrastructure changes where additional security scrutiny is warranted.

• Participate in external penetration tests, including preparation, technical coordination, analysis of findings, remediation planning, and validation of fixes.

• Help improve the effectiveness and repeatability of the penetration-testing program, with the opportunity to assume ownership of the program over time.

• Serve as the lead platform investigator during security and privacy incidents, working within the incident-response process led by the Head of Security.

• Analyze application, cloud, identity, network, audit, and infrastructure telemetry to determine the scope, impact, and root cause of incidents.

• Translate investigation findings into containment actions, durable remediations, improved detections, and clear technical documentation.

• Contribute to the design, implementation, tuning, and maintenance of SIEM detection rules that monitor our platform.

• Investigate and respond to alerts involving AWS infrastructure, application behavior, access patterns, data movement, and other platform activity.

• Improve logging and telemetry where existing data is insufficient to detect threats or investigate incidents.

• Develop security tooling and automation that help engineers identify and address vulnerabilities earlier.

• Partner with SRE and engineering teams on cloud configuration, identity and access management, secrets management, vulnerability management, and infrastructure hardening.

• Help establish practical security standards that reduce risk without unnecessarily slowing product development.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience in application security, cloud security, infrastructure security, or security-focused site reliability engineering.

• Experience securing production systems in AWS, including familiarity with identity, networking, logging, data protection, and common cloud attack paths.

• Strong working knowledge of Terraform and infrastructure-as-code security practices.

• The ability to assess security across both infrastructure and application layers rather than treating them as separate environments.

• Experience reviewing application architecture or source code for security vulnerabilities and design weaknesses.

• Familiarity with common application, API, authentication, authorization, and data-security risks.

• Experience investigating complex technical events using application logs, cloud telemetry, audit trails, and other security data.

• Experience writing, tuning, or responding to SIEM detection rules.

• The ability to distinguish meaningful security signals from expected production behavior and noisy telemetry.

• Experience evaluating penetration-test findings, determining their practical risk, and partnering with engineers on remediation.

• Strong scripting or software-development skills for building security tools, automations, and integrations.

• Demonstrated proficiency with agentic software development.

• Sound judgment when balancing security risk, operational reliability, engineering effort, and product priorities.

• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical risks and recommended actions to both engineering and non-engineering stakeholders.

• A collaborative approach that helps engineering teams build safer systems and make informed security decisions.

Bonus

• Partnership with IT Security in building and supporting each security domain

• Technical project management experience; ability to build a plan, clarify priorities, and both lead a team of collaborators and yourself to execute with urgency.

• Experience serving on a security or privacy incident-response team.

• Experience leading technical investigations during security or privacy incidents.

• SANS FOR509 training or certification.

• Purple teaming experience, including using offensive findings to improve defensive coverage.

• Experience owning or coordinating an external penetration-testing program.

• Experience with threat modeling, detection engineering, cloud forensics, or security automation.