Security Engineer
San Francisco$260k - $300kFull-timePosted 5mo ago
About the role
Security Engineers at Cognition own one of the most interesting security surfaces in the industry. Devin executes arbitrary code on behalf of users across millions of sandboxed sessions. Windsurf operates inside developer environments at scale. Both products handle highly sensitive customer code, credentials, and infrastructure access. You will help define what security looks like for AI-native developer tools and build the controls, systems, and culture that let Cognition ship fast without compromising on safety.
Responsibilities
- Secure the agent execution surface: Design and harden the sandboxing, isolation, and runtime controls that let Devin safely execute untrusted code and use tools across long-horizon tasks.
- Own product and infrastructure security: Lead threat modeling, secure design reviews, and vulnerability management across Devin, Windsurf, and the underlying infrastructure they run on.
- Build security tooling that engineers actually use: Create internal systems for secrets management, identity and access, dependency security, and detection that integrate naturally into how the team ships.
- Lead incident response and detection: Build the detection pipeline, run incident response, and turn every event into systemic improvements.
- Drive customer trust: Partner with go-to-market and legal teams to support compliance and customer trust initiatives. Build the controls that customers expect from a tool deeply embedded in their engineering workflow.
Qualifications
- Deep security engineering: Hands-on experience across product security, infrastructure security, and detection and response.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals: Proficiency in Python, Rust, Go, and comfort owning complex systems codebases.
- Cloud security expertise: Practical experience securing Kubernetes, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and multi-tenant compute environments.
- Web security expertise: Hands-on experience hardening complex, modern web applications.
- Threat modeling and adversarial thinking: Ability to identify how a system can break; think like an attacker and design like a defender.
- Incident response: Calm, methodical, and effective under pressure; experience leading incidents end to end and driving fixes.
- Comfort with novel problem spaces: Excited by security challenges unique to autonomous agents and AI-native developer tools.
- Relevant industry experience: Prior experience at a frontier AI lab, applied AI company, or developer tools company.
- Degree from a top-tier university: BS, MS, or equivalent in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or related technical discipline from a highly selective program.
Skills
Required:Security engineeringSoftware engineeringCloud securityWeb securityThreat modelingIncident responseAdversarial thinking
Benefits
- Base Salary: $260,000 - $300,000 + significant early-stage equity
- Medical, Dental, Vision: Fully paid for you and your dependents
- 401(k): Company match included
- Perks: Private chef, cozy slippers, endless snacks, and more
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Cognition
cognition is an applied AI lab
An applied AI lab building the future of software engineering. We’re the makers of Devin, a collaborative AI teammate that helps ambitious engineering teams achieve more.
AIai-plg-top-20collaborative AIliquid-ai-recruiting-targetmachine learningsoftware engineering
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