Staff + Software Security Engineer, Labs
Menlo Ventures PortfolioNew York, NY · full time · Lead / Staff / Principal
$320,000 – $485,000
Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s own careers site. You apply with them directly — we never stand between you and the employer.
What this role is
This is a high-risk, fast-moving security engineering role focused on building novel protections for AI systems before they become critical infrastructure. The team runs week-long experimental bets on problems like cryptographic proof of model integrity, hardened compute clusters, and verified compilation—and expects most to fail; it suits engineers with deep expertise in one hard area (cryptography, kernel internals, hardware security, formal methods) who have shipped things on their own and want to swing at problems that might not work rather than incrementally harden what exists.
Our summary, not Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s wording. The full posting is on their site.
Skills this role names
Log in to see which of these are already on your profile.
What they ask for
Required
- Deep expertise in at least one specialized area: firmware/hardware security, applied cryptography, OS/kernel/hypervisor internals, formal methods, reverse engineering, or high-assurance systems
- Built and shipped projects independently (founded company, maintained open-source, published impactful research)
- Track record of self-directed problem selection and completion
- Comfortable jumping between stack layers and domains as problems demand
- Experience running prototypes/experiments with uncertain outcomes
- Clear written communication able to distill weeks of work into actionable summaries
- Strong programming in Python plus one of Rust, Go, or C/C++
- Commitment to AI security and defensive mindset
Nice to have
- Experience in airgapped or high-side environments (classified networks, cross-domain systems, ICS/SCADA, trading infrastructure)
- Background in offensive security, red teaming, or vulnerability research
- Familiarity with ML infrastructure (training pipelines, schedulers, inference serving, accelerator hardware)
- Work history in rapid-iteration environments (startups, applied research, consulting, small security shops)