Partner 20, Staff Security Engineer, AI & Security Platform

As a Staff Security Engineer at a16z crypto, you anchor automation across the security organization. Your mandate is leverage: connect the tools the security team relies on, centralize the data they generate, and build the dashboards and AI-native automations that let a small team (Security Engineering and Incident Response) operate at the scale of a much larger one. This is an AI-native role where you build with and on AI-LLM-augmented workflows, agentic automations, and AI-assisted analysis as first-class building blocks. You'll help the rest of the security team get more leverage out of AI in their own work.

What you'll do

• Use AI as a first-class building block: LLM-augmented analysis, agentic automations, models, context, and evals, designed for compounding leverage
• Build the system that combines SIEM, vulnerability scans, EDR, identity, asset management, and foundation models into a single picture the team can act on
• Build the frameworks and dashboards that unify asset inventory, vulnerability posture, exposure reviews, and compliance evidence across systems
• Take the bigger automation problems off the team's plate: vulnerability management at scale, asset hygiene, access reviews, and the workflows that span multiple tools
• Raise the rest of the security team's leverage with AI: share patterns, ship tooling others use, and make it easy for security engineers and incident response engineers to add AI to their own work

What you bring

• 5+ years of security engineering experience, with automation and tool-building as a core part of your work, not a side project
• A builder mindset: comfortable shipping production-quality security tooling, with strong Python or similar
• Broad security fundamentals across cloud security, detection engineering, identity, and vulnerability management; depth in one is fine, but breadth across many is required
• Hands-on experience building with LLMs or AI APIs: integrating AI into workflows, evaluating model output for accuracy, usability, and performance
• Understanding of AI security risks: prompt injection, data exfiltration from LLM workflows, agent identity boundaries, and model risk
• Experience translating technical security concepts, decisions, and trade-offs into terms non-technical audiences across the firm can act on
• Low ego, high empathy, and the capacity to collaborate across security, engineering, and IT without creating friction

What we offer

• Anticipated salary range of $243,000 to $284,000; actual starting pay varies based on experience, skills, and scope
• Eligibility to participate in the a16z carry program and various discretionary bonus programs
• Health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance coverage
• 401(k) plan, vacation, and sick leave
• In-office presence required 2 days per week in San Francisco, CA

About a16z crypto

a16z is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 and backing bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology across AI, bio and healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, and American dynamism. With $100B+ under management, a16z has invested in companies like Coinbase, Figma, GitHub, and Stripe. The security team at a16z protects the firm, its LPs, and its portfolio companies against targeted threats including capital call wire fraud, vishing, and social engineering.