Founding Engineer - Cybersecurity Startup

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Title of the role: Founding Engineer

Location: Remote (North America)

Company Stage of Funding: Early-Stage, Venture-Backed

Salary: $150k-$200k

Equity: Meaningful early-stage equity

Company Description

We’re representing an early-stage cybersecurity startup rethinking how organizations train for real-world security threats. Instead of static, checkbox-style training, the company uses AI to build adaptive, behavior-driven security programs that help teams become genuinely resilient to modern attacks.

Backed by experienced operators and angels from leading security companies, the team values creativity, ownership, and velocity over rigid process. This is a high-trust environment built for engineers who like to ship, experiment, and build systems that matter—especially in a domain where human behavior is the weakest link in security.

What You Will Do

As a Founding Engineer, you’ll operate with end-to-end ownership across product and infrastructure. You won’t just implement tickets—you’ll help define what gets built, how it’s built, and why.

You will:

• Architect and own adaptive phishing simulation systems that evolve based on user behavior, risk, and role.
• Build backend infrastructure to ingest, process, and analyze real-time behavioral signals and telemetry.

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• Design and implement interfaces that help security teams understand and act on human risk data.
• Work directly with early customers to gather feedback and rapidly iterate on product features.
• Make foundational technical decisions, including tooling, architecture, and engineering patterns.
• Ship clean, scalable, well-documented code across the full stack.
• Use AI tools to increase development velocity and focus on high-impact problems.

Ideal Background

The ideal candidate is a high-agency engineer who enjoys ambiguity, ships independently, and wants to help build a company from the ground up.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Strong computer science fundamentals, including system design and data structures.
• Proficiency in at least one core backend or full-stack language such as Go or TypeScript.
• Proven track record of shipping products, features, or personal projects end-to-end.
• Comfortable owning systems and making architectural decisions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with a bias toward transparency.
• Genuine enthusiasm for building and iterating quickly in an early-stage environment.

Preferred

• Experience in cybersecurity, enterprise SaaS, or AI/ML-adjacent products.
• Familiarity with modern stacks such as Go, TypeScript, Next.js, Postgres/SQL, AWS, or Cloudflare.
• Public portfolio demonstrating how you think and build (GitHub, blog, or personal projects).
• Hands-on experience with LLMs or AI-assisted development tools.

Compensation and Benefits

• Compensation: $150k-$200k
• Equity: Meaningful equity as an early team member.
• Work Model: Fully remote within North America.
• Impact: Direct influence on product direction, architecture, and customer outcomes.
• Environment: Small, high-trust team where individual contributions are highly visible and valued.

Why This Role:

This is a true ground-floor engineering role. You’ll help define both the product and the company, working closely with customers and leadership to solve a real, unsolved problem in cybersecurity. If you value ownership, speed, and building systems that matter, this role offers an exceptional opportunity.

Equal Opportunity:

The company is committed to building an inclusive workplace. Employment decisions are based on qualifications and business needs without regard to protected characteristics. Discrimination and harassment of any kind are prohibited.