Staff Security Engineer

About the Role:

We're looking for an experienced Staff Security Engineer to own and scale application security across Redpanda's products, from the C++ core streaming engine to our Go cloud control plane, Console, and Rust/Go data-transform SDKs. Security at Redpanda is an engineering problem, not a checklist: you'll spend your time analyzing and breaking real systems code, building the paved roads and automation that make the secure path the default, and helping teams ship faster because security is built in rather than bolted on.

You'll be one of two engineers on a small, high-trust product security team, partnering every day with the engineers who build a system that Fortune 500 companies trust with their most critical data. Reporting to the Director of Information Security and working alongside our infrastructure security engineer, you'll own the day-to-day application-security work: secure SDLC, threat modeling, code-level vulnerability discovery, fuzzing the core engine, and our coordinated vulnerability disclosure and PSIRT response. As the application-security practice grows, you'll help shape its technical direction (in partnership with the Director, who owns the overall security program) and raise the security bar across all of engineering.

You Will:

• Lead threat modeling and secure design reviews for new product features across the C++ engine, Go control plane, and Console, catching trust-boundary and authorization flaws before code is written.
• Own and tune our application security testing (SAST, SCA / dependency scanning, secret scanning, and DAST) across C++, Go, and Rust, driving down false positives and gating the highest-severity findings in CI.
• Build the fuzzing harnesses for the core engine (coverage-guided and protocol-aware) and partner with platform engineering to run them continuously, integrating sanitizers to surface memory-safety and parsing defects early.
• Drive deep secure code review in systems languages, pairing your own expertise with AI-assisted analysis, and partner with engineering to eradicate whole classes of vulnerabilities rather than patching one bug at a time.
• Operate our product security incident response (PSIRT) and coordinated vulnerability disclosure: triaging external researcher reports, driving fixes with engineering, and publishing advisories and CVEs.
• Strengthen our software supply chain (dependency hygiene, SBOMs, build provenance, and progress toward higher SLSA build levels) in partnership with platform engineering.
• Stand up a security champions program and secure-by-default building blocks (libraries, patterns, guardrails) so engineering teams can own security with your support.
• Define security requirements and help shape the security release gates, and advise on product security features: authentication, authorization / RBAC, encryption, audit logging, multi-tenant isolation, and the Agentic Data Plane.
• Raise the security bar across engineering through pragmatic standards, training, and hands-on partnership, using modern AI-assisted development workflows (including tools like Claude Code) to scale your impact.

You Have:

• 7+ years in application or product security or adjacent specialties, with a track record of owning AppSec initiatives end-to-end and influencing engineering teams without direct authority.
• The ability to review and reason about code in a systems language (C++ or Rust strongly preferred, since our core engine is C++; Go valuable across the cloud control plane and tooling), whether reviewing it directly or with AI assistance, with strong instincts for memory safety, concurrency, and the vulnerability classes that matter (use-after-free, buffer overflow, injection, authorization flaws).
• Comfort with the security risks of memory-unsafe code and the appetite to fuzz it; fuzzing or sanitizer experience is a strong plus.
• Practical proficiency with the AppSec toolchain (SAST, SCA, secret scanning, DAST) and the judgment to apply risk-based prioritization rather than rigid textbook approaches.
• Demonstrated experience leading threat modeling and secure design reviews for non-trivial systems.
• Working knowledge of software supply-chain security (dependencies, SBOMs, signing, SLSA) and secure CI/CD practices.
• Familiarity with cloud (AWS / GCP / Azure) and Kubernetes security as it relates to the application layer.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable working in a globally distributed, async environment (e.g., GitHub).

Nice to Have:

• Experience with fuzzing (libFuzzer / AFL++ / OSS-Fuzz) and sanitizers (ASan / UBSan / MSan) on a C or C++ codebase.
• Background securing distributed systems, databases, or data-infrastructure products, including threat modeling consensus / replication and multi-tenant isolation.
• Experience running a PSIRT, operating as a CNA, or managing a bug bounty / coordinated disclosure program.
• Exposure to compliance programs (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP) from the engineering-evidence side.
• Contributions to open-source security, or experience handling vulnerabilities in a public open-source repository.

U.S. base salary range for this role is $210,000 - $247,000. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. We strive to consider each candidate's job-related skills, location, experience, relevant education or training to determine individual base salary. Your talent partner will share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.

Please note that Redpanda uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist in the screening and assessment of applications for this position. However, all final hiring decisions are made by our human hiring team.

Vacancy Status: This job posting is for an existing vacancy.