Senior Security Engineer (Infrastructure)

Headway; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

HSA/FSA

401(k) including match

Carrot Fertility reimbursement

Parental, medical and caregiver leave

Job summary

Headway is seeking an experienced Security Engineer to join the in-house security team. You will partner with product and infrastructure teams to design and implement secure platforms, build guardrails for secure-by-default development, and advance our cloud security posture across AWS.

You will contribute to incident response and vulnerability management to ensure a world-class security program. The role emphasizes security depth, collaboration across teams, and a focus on AI-enabled security

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience in security and/or software engineering roles with a demonstrated history of security-related projects.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Product and Infrastructure teams to build secure platforms and infrastructure.
• Define and build infrastructure and application guardrails so developers can build securely by default.
• Mature Headway's cloud security posture with AI-native configuration, hardening, and vulnerability remediation.
• Assist in incident response, vulnerability management, and security reviews to maintain a world-class security program.

Skills

Security engineering

Cross-functional collaboration

AI security

Security reviews

Tools

Wiz

Cloudflare

Python

TypeScript

Job description

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that.

But we're going further. Over 90,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 2.6 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale, and building much of it with AI. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.

We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

About the role

The Security team at Headway is focused on security and privacy for all of Headway’s customers - therapists, patients, and payers (ex: insurance companies and health systems). As an early member on the team, you’ll have the unique opportunity to be the builder and driver of our dedicated, in-house security engineering efforts. In this role, you will partner closely with our engineering teams to ensure that Headway systems are designed and managed securely so that we can maintain and grow customers’ trust in Headway.

What you'll do at Headway:

• Partner with Product and Infrastructure teams: Headway has many new product launches on the horizon that will transform the industry and have a rich data component. You will be a partner with teams to build platforms and infrastructure that accelerate product development while reducing risk, including (but not limited to):
  • System engineering or implementation efforts
  • Doing security reviews
  • Helping with system design decisions
  • Continuous improvement of Headway's critical infrastructure
• Make the safe way, the easy way: Work on defining and building infrastructure and application guardrails so that developers can build securely by default. You also will work to instill a culture of secure system design across engineering.
• Build out and mature Headway's cloud security posture: Build an AI-native approach to configuration standards, hardening, and vulnerability remediation across our AWS footprint.
• Assist in ongoing security operations: You will be part of the security and have responsibilities to assist in incident response, vulnerability management, security reviews, and other operational tasks to ensure that our security program is operating at a world-class level.

Tools we use:

• AI: Anthropic, Cursor, Langsmith
• Cloud Security: Wiz, Cloudflare
• Languages: Python 3, TypeScript
• Libraries: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, React
• Datastores: Postgres, Redis
• Infrastructure: AWS (Fargate, ECS, K8s, S3, and more)
• Monitoring: Datadog, PagerDuty
• Version Control: Github
• Vulnerability Management: Wiz, Semgrep

You’ll be great for this role if you have:

• Have 0 → 1 security experience: You have 5+ years experience in security and/or software engineering roles with a demonstrated history of working on security-related projects or with responsibilities as a security generalist.
• Strong cross-functional experience: You love partnering with other teams to help both teams achieve their goals.
• Strong technical depth and breadth: You have technical experience with building secure platforms and products at a deep level. You are excited to perform security design and code reviews. You want to understand security systems and improve their efficiency and scalability.
• Excited by AI’s potential: You believe AI will fundamentally reshape how infrastructure security works, and you want to be at the forefront of making that happen.
• Thrive in ambiguity: You love tackling ambiguous problems in a fast-paced environment with an optimistic and energizing attitude.
• Innovation at Scale: You seek opportunities to lead the industry in implementing the latest security and privacy technologies.
• Results driven: You care deeply about creating impact and driving results for Headway’s business.
• Mission driven: You are motivated by Headway’s mission, increasing access to high quality mental health care.

Comprehensive benefits:

Medical, dental, vision, HSA/FSA, 401(k) including match for 2027!, Carrot Fertility reimbursement, and paid parental, medical and caregiver leave.

We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview.

Headway participates in E-Verify.