Senior Engineer

The Atlantic; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 115,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

The Atlantic is seeking a Senior Security Engineer to design and implement security across our applications and services. You’ll work with engineering teams to ensure zero trust principles, data protection, and secure by design practices from the outset.

You will own security incidents end to end, help tune WAFs and IAM, and develop tooling to harden our platforms while maintaining reliability and performance. This is a hands-on role requiring collaboration across backend and DevOps teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with hands-on security focus.
• Strong backend programming and DevOps experience (CI/CD, IaC, cloud platforms).
• Deep understanding of secure software design and zero trust principles.
• Hands-on IAM, WAFs, and secure data access controls.
• Experience owning security incidents end to end (triage, root cause, fixes).

Responsibilities

• Partner with engineering teams to architect applications with security and data protection built in from the start, including zero trust networking and secure data access controls.
• Review architecture diagrams, code, and proposals to spot security issues before they ship.
• Secure agentic and LLM-driven workflows to prevent over-access, data exfiltration, and backdoors.
• Work with Operations to stand up and tune WAFs and IAM.
• Develop tooling that makes it easier to secure our applications and company data.
• Triage security incidents, identify root causes, and build solutions that prevent recurrence.
• Participate in on-call rotation to monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve production incidents.

Skills

Security engineering

Backend development

DevOps

IAM

WAFs

Incident ownership

CI/CD

IaC

Cloud platforms

Tools

Datadog

Sentry

Job description

The Atlantic is looking for a hands-on Senior Engineer to help us deliver industry-leading security across our applications and services. We aim to support a more thoughtful American public by powering and expanding our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism - and we want the products we ship to be worthy of that mission.
This is a unique opportunity to contribute to innovative, high-profile projects: you will configure, program, and integrate advanced security systems, working closely with engineering teams to keep our platforms seamless, secure, and reliable.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with significant hands-on work in security engineering
• Strong backend programming ability and comfort with general DevOps work (CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, cloud platforms)
• Deep understanding of secure software design and modern application security practices, including zero trust principles
• Hands-on experience with IAM, WAFs, and secure data access controls
• A track record of owning security incidents end to end - triage, root cause, and durable fixes

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience securing agentic and LLM-driven workflows against over-access, data exfiltration, and backdoors
• Experience developing security tooling and automation
• Familiarity with major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and an infrastructure-as-code tool (Terraform or similar)
• Background in consumer-facing web or mobile products
• Experience using observability and monitoring tools (Datadog, Sentry) as security and quality signals in production
• Familiarity with threat modeling and secure-by-design architecture

As The Atlantic's Senior Security Engineer, You Will

• Partner with engineering teams to architect applications with security and data protection built in from the start, including zero trust networking and secure data access controls
• Review architecture diagrams, code, and proposals to spot security issues before they ship
• Secure agentic and LLM-driven workflows to prevent over-access, data exfiltration, and backdoors
• Work with Operations to stand up and tune WAFs and IAM
• Develop tooling that makes it easier to secure our applications and company data
• Triage security incidents, identify root causes, and build solutions that prevent recurrence
• Participate in on-call rotation (outside of standard business hours) to monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve production incidents, ensuring system reliability and uptime.
• Contribute to general DevOps and backend engineering across company-wide architecture
• The role will at times include night, early-morning, and weekend work.

As The Atlantic's Senior Security Engineer, You Are

• A builder, deep and broad: This is fundamentally an engineering role - you'd rather build, architect, and solve hard technical problems than manage a checklist. You're equally at home in backend code, infrastructure, and DevOps, and you measure your impact in systems shipped and risks eliminated, not tickets tracked.
• Security-minded by design: You think like an attacker, architect defensively, and build security into systems rather than bolting it on afterward.
• AI-fluent: You understand how agentic and LLM-driven systems create new categories of security risk, and you're excited to work out how to secure them.
• A collaborator: You embed naturally with engineering teams and help them build securely by partnering on solutions - earning trust rather than enforcing from the outside.
• Pragmatic: You balance strong security with the need to ship, and you gravitate toward the simplest solution that genuinely reduces risk.
• A strong communicator: You can articulate security risk and tradeoffs clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• An interest in the pursuit of truth: You believe in what The Atlantic does and want the products we ship to reflect that.

Salary minimum: $115,000; Salary maximum: $140,000

This role is based in Washington, D.C.

This is a Guild position.

About The Atlantic

The Atlantic has, for more than 160 years, advanced ideas that matter and sparked global conversation on the most important issues of our time. We aim to bring clarity and original thinking to questions of consequence, on topics ranging from politics, the economy, and global affairs to technology, science, and culture. As the third-longest-running magazine in America, we find ourselves at a remarkable moment: one of both continuation and transformation, of upholding our legacy while continuously reinventing ourselves for the future.

The Atlantic Monthly Group LLC ("The Atlantic") is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The Atlantic is committed to diversity and encourages members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, LGBTQ people, people of color, and people with disabilities. We do not discriminate against our applicants because of race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable law.

Job offers to work at The Atlantic are contingent upon the candidate's successful completion of reference checks and compliance with The Atlantic's COVID-19 vaccination policy. The Atlantic requires all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, including subsequent boosters, and submit proof of vaccination status. Employees who cannot receive the vaccine because of a disability/medical contraindication or sincerely-held religious belief may request an accommodation (e.g., an exemption) to this requirement.