Security Engineer

慨正橡扯; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

Health benefits

Life insurance

Retirement plan

Parental leave

Fertility benefits

Snacks & coffee

Equity plans

Job summary

Sierra in San Francisco seeks a Security Leader to own the security of our platform, including applications, cloud, network, and AI agents. You will drive secure design reviews, threat modeling, and implement automation within CI/CD to speed up secure delivery.

You will work with engineering, product, and GRC to embed security across the SDLC, communicate risks, and champion best practices as we scale.

Qualifications

• Broad security expertise across web, cloud, and networking foundations.
• Hands-on programming, scripting, and DevOps tooling for automation.
• Familiar with secure coding, threat modeling, vulnerability scans, and incident response.
• Adaptable in a fast-paced startup, able to handle ambiguity gracefully.
• Strong written and verbal communication for cross-functional stakeholders.
• Customer-first mindset and curiosity about user needs.

Responsibilities

• Lead Security for Our Platform. Take charge of application, cloud, network, and AI agent security; perform secure design reviews and threat modeling.
• Collaborate with Cross-Functional Teams. Partner with engineering, product, and GRC to embed security in the SDLC and prioritize fixes.
• Implement Automation & Tooling. Integrate security tooling into CI/CD and use AI-based solutions for scans and compliance.
• Continuously Improve Security Posture. Audit cloud environments, review IAM, and drive best practices as the company scales.
• Enable Enterprise Customer Needs. Present security posture to enterprise clients and address regulated data concerns.

Skills

Web security

Cloud security

Networking

DevOps & automation

Threat modeling

Communication

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

CI/CD tooling

Vulnerability scanning

IAM governance

Job description

About us

• At Sierra, we’re creating a platform to help businesses build better, more human customer experiences with AI. We are primarily an in‑person company based in San Francisco, with growing offices in Atlanta, New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Munich, Singapore, Japan, and Sydney.

• We are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and Family. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do.

• Our co‑founders are Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor. Bret currently serves as Board Chair of OpenAI. Previously, he was co‑CEO of Salesforce (which had acquired the company he founded, Quip) and CTO of Facebook. Bret was also one of Google's earliest product managers and co‑creator of Google Maps. Before founding Sierra, Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he most recently led Google Labs. Earlier, he started and led Google’s AR/VR effort, Project Starline, and Google Lens. Before that, Clay led the product and design teams for Google Workspace.

What you’ll do

• Lead Security for Our Platform. Take charge of application, cloud, network, and AI agent security. This includes performing secure design reviews, overseeing threat modeling, and building new security primitives into our product and platform.

• Collaborate with Cross-Functional Teams. Partner closely with engineering, product, and GRC to embed security throughout the software development lifecycle. Communicate risks, prioritize fixes, and ensure security requirements enable innovation.

• Implement Automation & Tooling. Streamline security processes by integrating tooling into CI/CD pipelines and leveraging AI-based or next‑gen solutions to automate scans, compliance checks, and infrastructure reviews.

• Continuously Improve Security Posture. Conduct regular audits of our cloud environment, review IAM configurations, and stay on top of emerging AI security risks. Recommend strategic security initiatives and lead efforts to establish best practices as the company scales.

• Enable Enterprise Customer Needs. Present and explain our security posture to enterprise clients, helping them understand how we secure their data. Address concerns around healthcare, financial, or other regulated data with clear, actionable insights.

What you’ll bring

• Broad Security Expertise. Strong foundation in web application security, cloud security (AWS, Azure, or GCP), and networking principles.

• Coding and DevOps Skills. Hands‑on experience with programming production software, scripting, and DevOps tools for automation. Familiarity with secure coding practices, threat modeling, vulnerability scanning, and incident response processes.

• Adaptability and Resilience. Comfort working in a fast‑paced startup environment, ability to adapt to changing priorities and handle ambiguity with grace.

• Communication and Collaboration. Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to clearly explain risk trade‑offs and convey complex technical topics to both technical and non‑technical audiences.

• Curiosity & Customer‑First Mindset. Passion for deeply understanding customer needs and finding the right solutions from first principles.

Even better…

• Experience securing AI systems, with understanding of LLM and Agentic AI risks.

• Prior success in securing cloud infrastructure with robust policies and automated enforcement, and familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation).

• History of building or integrating custom security tools, especially those leveraging AI/ML for detection or monitoring.

• Familiarity with continuous compliance platforms and building control monitoring.

• Experience designing strong foundations with secure‑by‑design and privacy‑by‑design practices such as data handling, anonymization, and de‑identification.

Our values

• Trust: We build trust with our customers with our accountability, empathy, quality, and responsiveness. We build trust in AI by making it more accessible, safe, and useful. We build trust with each other by showing up for each other professionally and personally, creating an environment that enables all of us to do our best work.

• Customer Obsession: We deeply understand our customers’ business goals and relentlessly focus on driving outcomes, not just technical milestones. Everyone at the company knows and spends time with our customers. When our customer is having an issue, we drop everything and fix it.

• Craftsmanship: We get the details right, from the words on the page to the system architecture. We have good taste. When we notice something isn’t right, we take the time to fix it. We are proud of the products we produce. We continuously self‑reflect to continuously self‑improve.

• Intensity: We know we don’t have the luxury of patience. We play to win. We care about our product being the best, and when it isn’t, we fix it. When we fail, we talk about it openly and without blame so we succeed the next time.

• Family: We know that balance and intensity are compatible, and we model it in our actions and processes. We are the best technology company for parents. We support and respect each other and celebrate each other’s personal and professional achievements.

What we offer

We want our benefits to reflect our values and offer the following to full‑time employees:

• Flexible (unlimited) paid time off

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family

• Life insurance and disability benefits

• Retirement plan dependent on country of employment

• Parental leave

• Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot

• Lunch, as well as delicious snacks and coffee to keep you energized

• Discretionary benefit stipend giving people the ability to spend where it matters most

• Free alphorn lessons

These benefits are further detailed in Sierra's policies, may vary by region, and are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefits plans. Eligible full‑time employees can participate in Sierra's equity plans subject to the terms of the applicable plans and policies.

Be you, with us

We're working to bring the transformative power of AI to every organization in the world. To do so, it is important to us that the diversity of our employees represents the diversity of our customers. We believe that our work and culture are better when we encourage, support, and respect different skills and experiences represented within our team. We encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. We strive to evaluate all applicants consistently without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, pregnancy, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.