Staff Application & Product Security Engineer

Cleo (US); Chicago (IL); Remote; USD 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Great Healthcare

Flexible PTO

Remote work environment

Accelerated title and salary growth

Job summary

Cleo is seeking a Staff Application & Product Security Engineer to lead security by design for our on-premise and SaaS products. You will own SSDLC, threat modeling, and security tests, partnering with Engineering and our Cloud Security team.

You’ll guide developers through remediation, drive secure patterns, and mentor security champions across squads. You will report to the CISO and shape the security posture of Cleo’s products while coordinating with Product, CTO, and Architecture teams to

Qualifications

• 6+ years in application security or product security.
• Strong OO development background, Java preferred; read, debug & write production code across languages.
• Hands-on experience integrating SAST, SCA, and secrets scanning in CI/CD.
• Experience coordinating vulnerability disclosures and CVE processes.
• Product security in shipped software with secure defaults & customer-facing advisories.
• Clear communicator who translates risk into engineering guidance.

Responsibilities

• Own SSDLC: security requirements, threat modeling, design reviews for high-risk changes, APIs & integrations.
• Run and tune SAST, SCA, secrets detection, container & IaC scanning; build reusable secure patterns.
• Own developer security enablement: security champions, training campaigns, and self-service security capabilities.
• Lead risk-based triage, remediation & verification for vulnerabilities; validate patches before release.
• Own penetration testing program: scope third-party engagements and retest findings.
• Coordinate CVE lifecycle & vulnerability disclosure program.
• Own security controls in product-security programs across SaaS and on-prem deployments.

Skills

AppSec leadership

Threat modeling

SSDLC

SAST/SCA

CI/CD integration

Education

BS in Computer Science

Tools

Snyk

GitHub Advanced Security

Semgrep

Burp Suite

Job description

Staff Application & Product Security Engineer

Remote US

You will be the most senior hands-on application security engineer at Cleo, owning both how security is built into our products from design through release and the security posture of the products we ship, both on-premise and SaaS, as our customers experience them. This is a Staff-level individual contributor role with real program ownership: you set the standards, build the guardrails, and work directly with engineers in the code. You report to the CISO and partner daily with Engineering, and our Cloud Security team. You are not a one-person department: security engineers and consulting partners execute under your direction. Your job is to set direction, make the hard technical calls, and build leverage through automation and partners rather than carry every task yourself.

Secure development lifecycle and guardrails

• Own and mature Cleo’s SSDLC: security requirements, threat modeling, and design reviews for high-risk product changes, APIs, and integrations.
• Run and tune SAST, SCA, secrets detection, container, and IaC scanning.
• Build reusable secure patterns, reference implementations, and policy-as-code controls that make the secure path the default path.
• Own developer security enablement: Security Champions meeting, deliver the engineering security training campaigns, grow a named champion in every squad, and give developers practical remediation guidance, office hours, and self-service security capabilities.

Product vulnerability management

• Run risk-based triage, remediation, and verification for application and product vulnerabilities, including remediation SLAs, escalation, and exceptions. Reproduce externally reported vulnerabilities against running product instances and validate patches before release.
• Own the penetration testing program: scope and coordinate third-party engagements, perform targeted testing yourself, and validate findings through retesting.
• Run our Vulnerability Disclosure Program, including researcher communications and coordinated disclosure.
• Coordinate the CVE lifecycle for Cleo products and support product-security incident response.
• Own the application and product-security controls in Cleo's NIST CSF 2.0 program: track maturity, close gaps, and produce the evidence our audits rely on.

Product security

• Own the security posture of the products Cleo ships, across SaaS and customer-hosted deployment models: secure defaults, authentication and session controls, RBAC and tenant isolation, admin data access, security-relevant configuration, and hardening guidance for customers.
• Own the Product Security Roadmap: partner with Product Management, the CTO, and Architecture to get security features prioritized and shipped, including SSO/SAML upgrades, the in-app RBAC redesign, endpoint-level access control, and customer-requested controls, and represent security in RTE Sync and Boundary Review.
• Be the technical owner for customer-facing product security: triage customer vulnerability-scan findings and penetration-test reports against Cleo products, answer security RFIs and enhancement requests, and author customer-facing advisories, security release notes, and hardening documentation.
• Own threat modeling and security review for LLM-enabled product features, AI agents, and AI-assisted development workflows.
• Build controls and secure patterns for prompt injection, sensitive data exposure, insecure output handling, excessive agency, insecure tool integrations, and AI supply-chain risk.
• Apply and operationalize the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework across product and engineering.

Prerequisites

• 6+ years in application security, product security, or secure software engineering, including experience building or maturing an AppSec program across multiple engineering teams.
• Strong object-oriented developer: Strong proficiency in an object-oriented programming language is required, with Java preferred given Cleo’s core products are Java-based. You should be able to read, debug, and write production-quality code and be comfortable working across languages such as TypeScript, Python, or Go.
• Deep knowledge of application attack surfaces: authentication, authorization, API security, business-logic flaws, and modern service architectures.
• Hands-on experience integrating and tuning SAST, SCA, and secrets scanning in GitHub and CI/CD pipelines.
• Hands-on exploit reproduction and patch validation: you can take a researcher's report of a pre-authentication vulnerability, reproduce it against a running Java web application, confirm the fix, and write up what the researcher and the customer each need to hear.
• Coordinated disclosure experience with external security researchers and customers, including holding an embargo timeline and driving a CVE to publication.
• Product security experience on shipped software with an installed base: secure defaults and hardening guidance, customer-facing advisories and security release notes, and turning a customer's scan report or RFI into a fix-or-explain response.
• Experience running threat modeling, design reviews, and manual security testing, and working directly with developers through remediation.
• Clear communicator who can turn technical risk into engineering guidance for both developers and executives, and who can hold a release-gating decision with Engineering leadership when the risk warrants it.

Nice to Have

• Securing LLM applications, AI agents, or AI-assisted development tools.
• SBOM (CycloneDX/SPDX), VEX, artifact signing, and SLSA.
• Snyk, GitHub Advanced Security, Semgrep, Burp Suite.
• NIST CSF 2.0, OWASP SAMM/ASVS, NIST SSDF; supporting SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audits.
• CSSLP, OSWE, GWAPT, AWS Security, or comparable certifications.
• Enterprise software with both SaaS and customer-hosted deployment models; SSO/SAML, RBAC design, and multi-tenant isolation; MFT/EDI or other B2B integration products.

A few things we have to offer:

• Compensation: $160,000 to $180,000 + Bonus Opportunity
• Great Healthcare + Dental + Vision
• Flexible PTO
• Culture of support, encouraging Life-Work balance
• FSA and HSA options
• Employee Assistance Program
• Remote work environment
• Representing a company with 4,000+ clients and a 99% retention rate
• Accelerated title and salary growth potential
• A fun and energetic work environment that makes you excited to go to work every day

We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist in certain stages of our recruitment process, such as resume screening and candidate matching. These tools are designed to support fair and consistent evaluations. If you have questions about this process or would like to request an alternative assessment method, please contact us at [e-mail].

Cleo Communications US, LLC is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Cleo (US) ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.