Security Architect

Goodfire; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 400,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market competitive salary

Equity options

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

A pioneering AI safety company in San Francisco is seeking a Security Architect to oversee IT and physical security operations. This foundational role includes protecting the cloud infrastructure, managing access systems, and enhancing security measures for an AI-focused environment. The ideal candidate has over 7 years of experience in security engineering, particularly in cloud security. Additional perks include competitive salary and benefits, while contributing to the safe development of AI technology.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in security engineering.
• Strong foundation in cloud security (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA).

Responsibilities

• Design and implement security controls across cloud infrastructure.
• Own identity and access management with least-privilege access policies.
• Manage endpoint security and IT systems.

Skills

Cloud security knowledge

Identity management

Security engineering

Job description

Behind our name: Like fire, AI holds the potential for both immense benefit and significant risk. Just as mastering fire transformed human history, we believe the safe and intentional development of AI will shape the future of our species. Our goal is to tame this new fire.

Goodfire is an AI interpretability research company focused onunderstanding and designing AI systems that people can trust. Our mission is to advance humanity's understanding of AI to build safe and powerful AI systems. We believe that deep research breakthroughs are necessary to make this possible.

Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We’ve raised $59M from investors like Menlo, Lightspeed and Anthropic and work with customers including Arc Institute, Mayo Clinic, and Rakuten.

About the role

We're looking for a Security Architect to own IT and physical security operations at Goodfire. The stakes in AI development are extremely high, and we need to protect ourselves against sophisticated threats. In this role, you will lead our efforts to keep Goodfire secure against global risks.

This is a foundational role. Your responsibilities will include protecting our cloud infrastructure, securing company intellectual property, managing access to IT systems, and overseeing physical security for our offices. You will defend Goodfire against sophisticated actors seeking to infiltrate our systems.

This position reports directly to the CTO.

Where you'll contribute

• Infrastructure & DevOps – Protecting our cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, and production systems from attackers.
• IT Operations – Centralizing endpoint security, identity and access management, and physical devices.
• Physical Security – Leading office access controls, visitor management, and physical security measures appropriate for an AI research lab.
• Security Culture – Building a security culture which is ready to protect the organization from state level threats.

Key responsibilities

• Design and implement security controls across cloud infrastructure (research cluster, platform APIs).
• Own identity and access management, including SSO, hardware authentication, and least-privilege access policies.
• Manage endpoint security, device management, and IT systems.
• Establish and maintain security monitoring, logging, and incident response capabilities.
• Conduct security assessments and work with engineering teams to remediate vulnerabilities.
• Develop and maintain security policies, documentation, and compliance frameworks.
• Manage physical security systems including access controls and office security.
• Respond to security incidents across all domains—digital and physical.

What you'll bring

Required experience

• 7+ years of experience in security engineering.
• Strong foundation in cloud security (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience with identity management, SSO, and access control systems.
• Experience with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA) relevant to enterprise customers.
• Comfort operating as a generalist—you'd be happy jumping between configuring firewalls and setting up badge readers.
• You can deeply own the protection of our people and systems.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience at an early-stage startup or building security programs from scratch.
• Background in ML infrastructure or familiarity with ML training workflows.
• Physical security experience, including access control systems and facility security.

Our values

Goodfire is looking for individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We are building a team first and foremost.

Put mission and team first All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves.

Improve constantly We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work.

Take ownership and initiative There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self-driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we're building.

Action today We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today.

What we offer

This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.

The expected salary range for this position is $250,000 - $400,000 USD

Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world-class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life's work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now.