Staff Security Engineer, AI
Compa · Irvine
About Compa
Compa is a venture-backed AI startup revolutionizing the future of compensation! We're bringing AI-forward tools and human-centered engineering to make pay competitive and fair, for all. By offering a premier, live compensation data platform that delivers top-tier intelligence to enterprise teams, we enable the world's largest companies to make smart and fair decisions while staying competitive and compliant. In dynamic job markets during the rise of AI, companies need the best data to stay competitive!
Our force-multiplying team is powered by live data and thoughtful design, and our products have earned the trust of the world’s largest companies: NVIDIA, Stripe, DoorDash, OpenAI, Moderna, Workday, Ulta, Target, and more.
Come build with us!
The Role
Compa is an AI-first company, and we hold our own AI adoption to the same security bar our enterprise customers hold us to. Teams across Compa are putting agents and AI tools to work, and doing that securely at enterprise scale is frontier work: the industry playbook is still being written, and we're looking for a Staff Security Engineer who wants to help write it.
As a senior member of Compa's Security team reporting directly to the Head of Security and IT, you’ll build the systems that deliver secure, governed AI to the business: the identity, access, data, endpoint, and network foundation that lets people and agents work safely. Most of your near- and mid-term work is building that foundation. Because it's built from enterprise security primitives, that same work also strengthens and extends our broader security program.
You're a security engineer first. You reason about threats, identity, and trust boundaries before tools, hold a high bar for security and privacy, and measure success by what ships. You're also an enabler: you obsess over getting every piece to line up so that what's secure is also what's easiest to use. Strong pushback is expected where it's warranted; the usual answer is "yes, here's how": a secure path to the outcome, not the request at face value.
What You'll Do
Build the secure foundation for AI at Compa. Design and implement the architecture AI tools and agents run on, across identity, data, endpoint, SaaS, and network, as reusable infrastructure. Codify it in policy, standards, and reference architectures so new tools land on a paved road, not a one-off review.
Make secure adoption the fast path. Help every team get on approved AI tools quickly.
Own requests end to end. Turn ambiguous asks into clear requirements, then design, implement, and support the solution in production, partnering with IT, engineering, legal, privacy, and business leaders along the way.
Secure non-human identities and agent access. Define how agents, service accounts, and integrations authenticate and what they can do, with scoped credentials, OAuth scope governance, least privilege, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints for consequential actions.
Control the paths data takes. Govern how internal data reaches models and agents and how it leaves, through classification, permission-aware retrieval, AI gateways with DLP, MCP and tool allowlisting, and egress controls. Assess third-party models and AI vendors for security, data retention, and training-use terms.
Evaluate with an attacker's mindset. Map attack paths for new models, agents, and integrations, from prompt injection and unsafe tool use to OAuth abuse and data exfiltration. Decide deliberately where to add friction or say no, and document the residual risk.
Build for detection and response. Make sure what you build produces audit logs of prompts, tool calls, and agent actions, plus detections for anomalous tool use and unexpected data movement. Automate enforcement so secure configurations scale with the business and stay the default.
Raise Compa's security posture across the board. Contribute to multidisciplinary security initiatives across identity, endpoint, SaaS, cloud, network, detection, and incident response.
What We're Looking For
Significant hands-on security engineering experience with strong fundamentals and a security and privacy-first approach.
Experience designing, building, or securing AI systems or integrations, such as agents and tool use, retrieval over internal data, or MCP, and a working understanding of how they're attacked, including prompt injection, data leakage, and excessive agency.
Deep experience with identity and access architecture: SSO and federation (SAML, OIDC), conditional access and MFA, privileged access, identity lifecycle, non-human identities, and OAuth consent and scopes.
Hands-on experience securing endpoints and SaaS, including device management across major operating systems, device posture in access decisions, SaaS admin controls, third-party integrations, and audit logging.
Strong cloud and network security fundamentals, such as cloud IAM, segmentation, and egress control.
A working understanding of adversary TTPs and attack paths across identity, endpoint, cloud, and SaaS.
A builder's habits: you make the secure way the default instead of asking people to follow instructions. You'd push an MDM policy rather than send a how-to, reach for code to automate what repeats, and keep things like configurations and agent skills versioned in a repo.
Demonstrated staff-level judgment: reasoning from requirements to architecture before tools, turning novel problems into concrete plans, and explaining trade-offs and residual risk effectively to technical and non-technical audiences across levels.
As a Plus
Hands-on experience deploying AI security controls such as MCP gateways, LLM proxies, or sandboxed agent execution.
A background in threat hunting, incident response, detection engineering, or offensive or purple team work.
Familiarity with AI risk frameworks such as the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications, MITRE ATLAS, or NIST AI RMF.
Experience in regulated or high-trust environments, or with privacy and data protection programs.
Experience building enterprise security architecture at a growing company.
Compa offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, PTO and parental leave, equity, company offsites, continuous education, commuter benefits and a flexible work environment.