Founding Security Engineer
Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company
San Francisco, CA · Posted October 17, 2026
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Where San Francisco, CA ranks
Where San Francisco, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for security jobs316 openings · of 20
- #1Best cities for technology jobs7,178 openings · of 100
- #1Best cities for financial services pay after cost of living$173k · of 33
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills35% · of 100
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the West Coast35% · of 54
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast902 jobs · of 47
Rankings about security jobs
- Best cities for security jobs #1 San Francisco (316 openings)
- Best cities for security pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($241k)
- Most requested AI skills in security jobs #1 AI tools in daily work (10.8%)
- Employers with the most security jobs #1 Amazon (318 roles)
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among computer occupations, all other, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for computer occupations, all other: 31% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
Say which you have and which you want to build. We use it to match you to jobs like this one.
About the job
About AIUC
AIUC builds standards and insurance for frontier AI. Our mission is to Underwrite superintelligence . We exist because risk, not capability, is becoming the binding constraint on AI being useful. History offers lessons for how to build confidence in new technology; electricity burned down houses until insurers funded Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to certify products against their standards. Today, the UL mark is a trustmark on every light bulb in America. We’re building that for AI.
AIUC-1, our standard for agent security, serves frontier builders like Cursor, Lovable, ElevenLabs, and Harvey. We've raised $55m from Ribbit, First Harmonic and Nat Friedman to audit frontier AI. Our team comes from METR, Anthropic, McKinsey, and OpenAI. Come join us.
The Role
AI agents now handle sensitive data and run real infrastructure. Their biggest risks, from prompt injection and credential sprawl to tool misuse and MCP and A2A attacks, still have no established defenses.
AIUC-1 is the standard Fortune 500 CISOs use to decide which AI agents they can trust. That only works if we’re the most secure company in the room.
You’ll be our first security hire, joining as we open our product to the world, while our own agents test other companies’ agents. You’ll own security end to end across our product, evaluation platform, and internal systems, and work directly with the founders. You’ll take on agent security problems nobody has solved, prove the answers on our own systems, and watch them become the playbook other companies follow.
From there, the ceiling is yours: become the security leader who advises our consortium of 300+ CISOs, helps shape AIUC-1’s security requirements, and defines what agent security means in practice.
This role is hard. You’ll say no often, including to the founders, and hold the line when it’s unpopular. The best way to make that work is to make the secure path the fast path. When you’re doing it well, no one talks about security.
In this role, you will:
Make sure our product is secure as it reaches more and more enterprise customers
Build the secure foundation for running agents: sandboxing, agent credential access, and core development
Own security across the company: network, vendors, access, data, and customer security reviews
Get ahead of the risks we don’t have yet, as new products and attack classes emerge
Respond to incidents fast, and fix problems before they become incidents
Feed what you learn back into AIUC-1, and share it with our CISO consortium through sessions and published work
What we're looking for
You’ve likely done this before: as the founding security hire at a technical or regulated-industry company, building the program from zero; or as a core engineer at a security company, where getting security right was the product.
Engineer first: you’ve built production systems, can clear our full engineering bar, and want to start hands-on before growing into leading security
Cloud and infrastructure security: you’ve secured least-privilege IAM, SSO, clean dev/prod separation, KMS and secrets management, plus secure databases, user management, and identity systems
Agent builder: you’ve built an agent harness and know how to contain one, through sandboxing, tool permissions, credential isolation, and data-leak controls
Holds the line, keeps people on side: you own outcomes end to end and can say no without being pushed around or burning bridges
Ready when things break: you’ve built detection, logging, and incident response, and secured the corporate surface (SSO, devices, SaaS)
Security as code: you review infrastructure changes in Terraform and automate controls so engineers move faster, not slower
Nice to Haves
You’ve turned security research into production engineering (e.g. reproducing new attacks on agents and shipping the defenses)
Deep architecture experience across distributed systems, ML pipelines, or large-scale platforms
You’d enjoy learning from enterprise security teams, from our CISO consortium to customers, how agents are changing their environments
Our Values
We are in the business of building trust. We take our values seriously and treat them as commitments to each other, held to the same bar as the ones we make to customers.
Strong back: high standards, keep our promises, work hard.
Fast feet: experiment, cut scope, take delight in pace.
Eyes up: wrestle with the mission, and let where AI is heading shape our strategy, our teams and our day-to-day work.
Open heart: say the scary thing, create connection, make room for emotions.
Underwriting superintelligence is our life's work. If you want it to be yours, apply now.
Compensation & Perks
Competitive annual salary
Equity (significant part of total compensation)
Health, dental and vision insurance for you and your dependents
Visa sponsorship and relocation stipend to bring you to SF, if needed
Daily lunch, dinner & snacks