Staff Security Engineer, Cloud

ridealso; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 205,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

One Medical membership

Fertility benefits

401(k) match

Job summary

ALSO, a Silicon Valley-based electric mobility company, seeks a Staff Security Engineer for Cloud to own security end-to-end for a connected EV platform. You’ll architect and implement security controls across AWS, Kubernetes, and microservices, writing Go services and enforcing policies at scale.

You’ll lead threat modeling, perform security reviews, and build guardrails in code so engineers move fast without compromising safety. Strong hands-on cloud, container, and identity expertise required.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in backend and infrastructure engineering with security ownership in production.
• Expert, hands-on AWS experience (IAM, VPC, KMS, GuardDuty, etc.).
• Deep Kubernetes and container security with real cluster operations.
• Fluent Go production code development.
• Experience with identity protocols (OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, SAML, mutual TLS).
• Threat modeling and secure architecture reviews with incident response leadership.
• Demonstrated 0-to-1 ownership of a security function or program.

Responsibilities

• Own cloud security end-to-end: strategy, architecture, implementation, and operations across AWS, Kubernetes, and microservices.
• Design and implement scalable identity and access management, secrets, and mTLS.
• Harden containers, admission controls, and network policies across clusters.
• Secure the software supply chain: SBOM, scanning, signed artifacts, and CI/CD gating.
• Build guardrails and policy-as-code to enable fast yet secure engineering.

Skills

10+ years backend security ownership

AWS security

Kubernetes security

Go production code

Threat modeling

Incident response leadership

0-to-1 security program

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Go

CI/CD

Terraform

Job description

About ALSO.

We're ALSO, an electric mobility company originally conceived as a part of Rivian. We're a passionate team of builders, dreamers, doers and innovators, focused on creating entirely new (not to mention, innovative and delightful) vertically integrated, small EVs designed to meet the global mobility challenges of today and tomorrow. Our mission is to inspire everyone to ride ALSO-replacing many local car, truck and SUV miles with ones on vehicles that are more affordable, more enjoyable and 10-50x more efficient.

At ALSO, we are looking for a Staff Security Engineer for Cloud who wants to own security end to end - not advise on it, build it - for a connected, software-defined EV platform where nearly everything of value runs through the cloud: telemetry streaming in from vehicles in the field, remote diagnostics and updates, fleet intelligence, and the product APIs customers touch every day.

You'd set the security architecture and then build it yourself, in Go, alongside the backend team - equally comfortable writing a threat model, reviewing a Kubernetes admission policy, and shipping the service that enforces it. You'd be the person the company turns to for every question that starts with "is this secure," with the autonomy to actually answer it properly rather than just flag the risk and move on.

What You'll Do

• Own cloud security end to end - strategy, architecture, implementation, and operations across AWS, Kubernetes, and our microservices platform - including threat modeling new systems in architecture reviews before the code exists

• Design and implement identity and access at scale: workload identity, org-wide IAM, least privilege by default, secrets management, and certificate/key lifecycle, including mutual TLS between services and between cloud and vehicle

• Harden containers and orchestration: image provenance, admission control, runtime and network policy, service mesh configuration, and clean isolation across microservices

• Secure the software supply chain: SBOM generation, dependency and image scanning, signed artifacts, and CI/CD pipelines that fail closed on what matters and stay quiet on what doesn't

• Build the controls in Go - authorization services, policy enforcement, provisioning and rotation tooling - and serve as the DevSecOps function, writing guardrails and policy as code so other engineers move fast without routing every decision through security

• Run detection and response: security logging and telemetry, meaningful alerting, runbooks, on-call for security incidents, and blameless postmortems that produce real fixes

• Secure the vehicle-to-cloud boundary: device identity and provisioning, fleet-wide certificate rotation, secure OTA update paths, and anomaly and tamper detection at scale

• Contribute to core backend work alongside the team, and own assurance - penetration tests, vulnerability management, evidence collection, and proportionate standards work that strengthens the product instead of slowing it down

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years in backend and infrastructure engineering, with a substantial portion spent owning security in production

• Expert, hands-on AWS: IAM, VPC and network design, KMS, Secrets Manager, GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudTrail, Config, and org-level guardrails (SCPs), alongside core compute and data services (EKS, ECS, ECR, Lambda, DynamoDB, S3)

• Deep Kubernetes and container security - RBAC, admission controllers, pod security standards, network policy, secrets handling, runtime detection, and image hardening - with real experience operating clusters, not just reading about them

• Fast, fluent Go: you design, review, and ship production Go code today, not several years ago

• Microservices and distributed systems security: service-to-service authentication and authorization, API gateway patterns, rate limiting, tenant isolation, and event-driven pipeline security

• Identity protocols and applied cryptography in practice: OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, SAML, mutual TLS, and PKI with certificate lifecycle management at scale

• Infrastructure and policy as code, with security gating built into CI/CD

• Threat modeling and secure architecture review as routine practice, with specific examples of designs you've changed, plus incident response you've personally led from detection through postmortem

• Demonstrated 0 to 1 ownership: you've stood up a security function or program where none existed, without a large team behind you

The salary for this position ranges from $205,000 - $240,000 per year, depending on experience, qualifications, and location.

Perks & Benefits

• Robust health coverage - excellent health, dental and vision insurance covered up to 100% by ALSO with FSA & HSA options

• One Medical membership and dedicated insurance advocates

• Rich fertility and family building benefits with Progyny

• Flexible time off

• 401(k) match

Why ALSO.

We're passionate about helping the world find a better way to get there-wherever it is you're headed.

We're located in the heart of Silicon Valley and have brought together a world-class team from some of the biggest brands in the technology, automotive, cycling, outdoor recreation and retail spaces.

Together we're working hands-on to imagine, design and build an entirely new solution to a global set of transportation challenges.