Principal Security Engineer, Infrastructure Security

The Team

Upstart’s Infrastructure Security team is focused on securing the cloud, compute, platform, and deployment layers that run our products. We believe security should enable fast, safe delivery through strong engineering fundamentals, automation, and secure-by-default patterns. Our team partners closely with platform, infrastructure, SRE, product engineering, risk, and compliance teams to reduce risk in areas such as cloud IAM, Kubernetes and container security, network controls, secrets management, infrastructure-as-code, production vulnerability management, and AI-assisted developer workflows.

As the Principal Security Engineer at Upstart, you will define and drive the technical strategy for securing Upstart’s production infrastructure and developer platforms. You will lead cross-functional and cross-organizational efforts to reduce systemic infrastructure risk, influence architecture and engineering roadmaps, and build durable security controls that scale across teams. This role is well suited for a senior technical leader who brings deep infrastructure security expertise, strong engineering judgment, and the ability to translate complex security risks into practical, high-impact improvements for the business. 

How you’ll make an impact:

• Define and drive Upstart’s infrastructure security strategy, aligning secure-by-default principles with business priorities, regulatory expectations, and Upstart’s cloud-native engineering roadmap.
• Own the security roadmap for cloud, platform, compute, and deployment environments, partnering with infrastructure, platform, SRE, and product engineering leaders to reduce risk across multiple organizations.
• Lead security architecture reviews for critical infrastructure initiatives, influencing technical decisions in areas such as cloud IAM, Kubernetes, container security, network segmentation, secrets management, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Identify and reduce systemic infrastructure security risks by designing durable preventative controls, guardrails, and automation that improve security outcomes across engineering teams.
• Establish standards and patterns for production access, service identity, workload trust, infrastructure hardening, vulnerability management, and secure operational practices.
• Partner with engineering teams to improve the security of AI-assisted developer workflows and GenAI-enabled systems, including agentic tooling, coding assistants, and internal AI integrations that interact with production or sensitive environments.
• Serve as a senior technical authority during high-severity security or production incidents, driving root cause analysis, risk-based prioritization, and long-term architectural improvements.
• Elevate infrastructure security maturity across Upstart by mentoring engineers, influencing senior stakeholders through clear risk communication, and helping teams build secure systems with less friction.

What we’re looking for: 

• Minimum requirements:
  
  • 8+ years of experience in security engineering, infrastructure engineering, software engineering, or a related technical role.
  • 4+ years of experience focused on infrastructure, cloud, platform, or production security.
  • Experience securing cloud-native infrastructure in AWS or a similar cloud environment.
  • Experience with multiple infrastructure security domains, such as cloud IAM, Kubernetes or container security, network security, secrets management, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD security, production access, or vulnerability management.
  • Experience writing code or automation in Python, Go, Java, Ruby, or a similar programming language.
  • Experience leading security architecture reviews or technical risk assessments for complex production systems.
  • Experience designing and implementing preventative security controls, guardrails, or platform-level security solutions used by multiple engineering teams.
  • Experience leading cross-functional security initiatives with infrastructure, platform, SRE, product engineering, risk, compliance, or audit stakeholders.
• Preferred qualifications:
  • 10+ years of experience spanning security engineering, infrastructure engineering, software engineering, or cloud platform engineering.
  • Experience owning a security roadmap for a technical domain that spans multiple teams or organizations.
  • Experience with Kubernetes security, service-to-service trust models, workload identity, runtime security, or cloud-native network controls.
  • Experience improving cloud security posture management, hardening baselines, drift detection, or infrastructure vulnerability management programs.
  • Experience building or scaling infrastructure security programs, including defining metrics, maturity models, and risk-based prioritization frameworks.
  • Familiarity with security considerations for AI-assisted engineering workflows, including code generation, code review tooling, agentic automation, and sensitive data exposure risks.
  • Experience partnering with Legal, Risk, Compliance, or Audit teams to operationalize security controls in a regulated environment.
  • Security certifications such as AWS Security Specialty, GCP Professional Cloud Security Engineer, CISSP, CCSP, or equivalent practical expertise.

Position Location - This role is available in the following locations: Remote (US), San Mateo, Columbus, Austin

Time Zone Requirements - This team operates on the East/West Coast time zones.

Travel Requirements - As a digital first company, the majority of your work can be accomplished remotely. The majority of our employees can live and work anywhere in the U.S but are encouraged to to still spend high quality time in-person collaborating via regular onsites. The in-person sessions’ cadence varies depending on the team and role; most teams meet once or twice per quarter for 2-4 consecutive days at a time.

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