Principal Cybersecurity Engineer Jobs in San Francisco, CA

Our Mission

Our mission is to restore cell health and resilience through cell rejuvenation to reverse disease, injury, and the disabilities that can occur throughout life. For more information, see our website at altoslabs.com.

Our Value

Our Single Altos Value: Everyone Owns Achieving Our Inspiring Mission.

Diversity at Altos

Altos Labs has been named one of the Top 3 Biotech Companies and ranked for the second year on the Forbes 2026 Best Startups in America list. At Altos, exceptional scientists and industry leaders from around the world work together to advance a shared mission. Our intentional focus is on Belonging, so that all employees know that they are valued for their unique perspectives. We are all accountable for sustaining a diverse and inclusive environment.

What You Will Contribute To Altos

The Altos Security team is looking for a highly collaborative Senior Engineer to join our team to help enhance and extend our human focused security program. You will be working directly with scientists, engineers, and IT staff to enable a hyper collaborative environment supporting world class research and development programs. You will build modern, scalable security capabilities that protect sensitive scientific data and AI/ML workloads, improve our readiness to handle security incidents, and strengthen threat detection, response, and data protection across cloud and on-prem environments. This opportunity will give you the chance to build an effective security program that directly impacts the trust and safety of our organization and its stakeholders. Candidates for this role should take pride in balancing risks and benefits of any security control, system or action as well as always looking for opportunities to optimize, automate, reduce and simplify systems.

Responsibilities

- Develop security controls that can enable scientists and researchers while protecting sensitive data (intellectual property, regulated data, experimental datasets)
- Perform threat modeling and risk assessments for applications, infrastructure, AI/ML systems, and lab/OT environments; translate findings into pragmatic controls and roadmaps
- Leverage DevOps principles and Infrastructure as Code techniques to scale security systems and controls
- Build automations and integrations (SOAR) around tools, processes, and systems to facilitate ongoing operations, reduce toil, and improve response times
- Manage Incident Response - prepare playbooks, perform triage, investigation, and remediation; coordinate cross-functional response; conduct forensic analysis; run tabletop exercises and after-action reviews; continuously improve detection and response
- Secure AI solutions from threats to data security, integrity, and misuse; implement model and prompt safety guardrails; evaluate enterprise and third-party AI tools; contribute to AI usage policies and governance
- Act as a security subject matter expert - educating, training, and mentoring others

Who You Are

An ideal candidate would be representing the Altos Cybersecurity team in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, or Cambridge, UK.

Minimum Qualifications

- 7 years of experience in the technology space (at least 5 with a security focus)
- Comfortable collaborating with engineers, scientists, legal/compliance and IT professionals
- Proficient in on-premises and cloud security engineering, including Infrastructure as Code solutions. Skilled in code security, secrets management, vulnerability scanning, and detection engineering.
- Experience performing application and/or infrastructure design reviews to identify areas of improvement as well as recommending appropriate security controls. Ideal candidates would also follow through to ensure their recommendations are implemented.
- Expertise in managing security incidents, conducting detailed analysis of security events, and overseeing sensitive investigations related to cyber activities
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related field
- Ability to work without supervision, ability to handle competing priorities.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience working in a compliance oriented environment (healthcare, government, fintech, ISO, SOC, PCI, etc)
- Information security certifications (CISSP, GIAC, etc)
- Experience with AI risk assessment, red teaming of AI/LLM systems, and defenses against prompt injection, data exfiltration, and excessive agency

The salary range for Redwood City, CA:
- Senior Cybersecurity Engineer: $169,700 - $217,500
- Staff Cybersecurity Engineer: $196,800 - $252,300

The salary range for San Diego, CA:
- Senior Cybersecurity Engineer: $141,400 - $181,300
- Staff Cybersecurity Engineer: $169,700 - $217,500

Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location. For UK applicants, before submitting your application:
- Please click here to read the Altos Labs EU and UK Applicant Privacy Notice (bit.ly/eu_uk_privacy_notice)
- This Privacy Notice is not a contract, express or implied and it does not set terms or conditions of employment.

Equal Opportunity Employment

We value collaboration and scientific excellence. We believe that a culture of belonging are foundational to scientific innovation and inquiry. At Altos Labs, exceptional scientists and industry leaders from around the world work together to advance a shared mission. Our intentional focus is on Belonging, so that all employees know that they are valued for their unique perspectives. We are all accountable for sustaining an inclusive environment. Altos Labs provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment, without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Altos prohibits unlawful discrimination and harassment. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Thank you for your interest in Altos Labs where we strive for a culture of scientific excellence, learning, and belonging.

Note: Altos Labs will not ask you to download a messaging app for an interview or outlay your own money to get started as an employee. If this sounds like your interaction with people claiming to be with Altos, it is not legitimate and has nothing to do with Altos. Learn more about a common job scam at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-spot-avoid-online-job-scams-biron-clark/