Staff Application Security Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Please Note: This is a remote position available in the state listed on this job. Additionally, employment with BambooHR is contingent on passing both a background and credit check.

AI at BambooHR

At BambooHR, we believe in leveraging cutting-edge technology to empower people and transform HR. We're actively integrating AI into our solutions and workflows to enhance efficiency and drive innovation. To that end, we're looking to our existing team members and future hires to share this forward-thinking mindset: individuals who are curious about AI's potential, eager to learn and adapt, and ready to explore how intelligent tools can elevate their work along with BambooHR's impact on setting people free to do great work. Join us in reimagining the future of HR!

Essential Job Duties

AI is becoming part of how BambooHR's platform works, from features we build to agents that connect through open protocols. We're hiring a Staff Application Security Engineer to help lead application security through that shift and beyond. You'll set the review bar and standards for agentic systems, and you'll architect the agents our security team uses to scale its work. It is a hands-on, organization-level role for someone who does well in ambiguity and gets results through knowledge, influence, and the help of their team.

You will:

• Lead security reviews and threat models of AI features and agentic systems — including autonomous agents, MCP servers, and third-party integrations — and keep review playbooks and quality criteria current
• Set BambooHR's security standards for AI agents, covering identity and delegated authorization, tenant- and user-scoped data access, safe handling of tool output, tool supply chain, and human-approval requirements, and track adoption as threats evolve
• Own the design of agents the security team uses for finding validation, triage, review assistance, and remediation — building and shipping them with clear evaluation criteria, bounded permissions, and human approval gates for high-impact actions
• Help developers and security champions build and use agents safely through self-serve guidance and tooling, and advocate for the partner-team investment that work requires
• Work with engineering and product leadership to embed security requirements into the SDLC, including design-time and release-time gates for AI features, and make agent-assisted code review, finding validation, and fix suggestions a default part of every team's CI/CD pipeline with clear blocking criteria and a fast exception path
• Run security programs that span multiple teams and quarters — setting goals, milestones, and success metrics; maintaining a lightweight intake, prioritization, and retrospective cadence; coordinating dependencies across engineering, product, and operations; and reporting progress, risks, and tradeoffs to leadership
• Represent AppSec in architecture forums, harmonize security requirements to reduce duplicated effort across teams, act as a point of escalation, and coach leaders on security tradeoffs
• Partner with Legal, Privacy, and GRC on AI governance to close gaps between policy intent and technical implementation through guardrails and automation, including for emerging AI regulations
• Train and coach software engineers and engineering teams on secure design and threat modeling, with emphasis on authentication, authorization, multi-tenancy, and AI features
• Mentor fellow security engineers on technical direction and career growth, and close skill gaps on the security team through onboarding, training, and mentorship
• Participate in an on-call rotation as needed to support incident response and resolve escalated security issues

What You Need to Get the Job Done

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of experience in security, including 5+ years of hands-on experience in application security
• Experience securing multi-tenant SaaS platforms, including tenant isolation
• Cloud and infrastructure security experience (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Hands-on experience building AI agents or agentic workflows, with concrete examples of how you handled permissions, failures, and validation — production systems, internal tools, personal or open-source projects, and substantial prototypes all count
• Demonstrated ability to evaluate the security of AI and agentic systems, including prompt injection, tool and context poisoning, excessive agency, delegated authorization, data leakage, and supply-chain risk in models and tools; familiarity with the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications, the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications, or comparable frameworks
• Ability to design evaluations for agentic workflows covering task success, false positives and negatives, adversarial cases, and regression checks
• Proven experience leading threat modeling (e.g., STRIDE, attack trees) and design reviews for complex applications and APIs
• Deep understanding of web application and API security, including authentication and authorization (OAuth 2.0 scopes and delegation, OpenID Connect, token audience and validation), session management, and access control models
• Strong software engineering skills in at least one language (e.g., Python, TypeScript, PHP), including testing and maintaining tools other people depend on
• A track record of influencing without authority: leading cross-team initiatives, building business cases, and explaining technical risk in business terms to engineering, product, legal, and leadership audiences
• Experience mentoring engineers, formally or informally
• Sound judgment in ambiguous situations, including the ability to explain a tradeoff, recommend a mitigation, and bring risk-acceptance decisions to the right owner

What Will Make Us REALLY Love You

• Experience securing MCP servers and gateways
• Experience securing AI coding assistants or developer agent tooling at organizational scale, or integrating AI-driven security checks into CI/CD pipelines
• Familiarity with AI governance and SaaS compliance frameworks (e.g., NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, EU AI Act, SOC 2, ISO 27001)
• Relevant security certifications (e.g., CSSLP, OSWE, GWAPT)
• Experience building or running security champions programs, such as recruiting and training champions or embedding security advocates in engineering teams

What You'll Love About Us

• A Great Company Culture that has been recognized by multiple organizations like Inc, and Salt Lake Tribune
• Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance
• Generous leave policies that include 4 weeks of vacation, 12 company holidays, parental leave, and volunteer time off so you can enjoy quality of life
• 401k plans with up to 6% company match
• $2000 Paid-Paid Vacation bonus
• EAP through Headspace
• Check out all our benefits that benefit you

#LI-Remote

About Us

At BambooHR, we're building something different: we're building a people intelligence platform that transforms HR and sets people free to do great work! We're a proven market leader driving innovation while building lasting success through thoughtful, sustainable growth. Here, you'll find a place that champions growth: both professional and personal, both individual and collective. 

We invest in potential, giving you the space to stretch your capabilities and turn good ideas into reality while providing the safety net of a supportive, values-driven culture. Our approach combines meaningful work with meaningful lives, offering competitive benefits, professional development, and the flexibility to thrive both in and outside the office. 

What sets us apart isn't just what we do, but how we do it: with openness, integrity, and a shared commitment to doing the right thing. Join us in creating HR software that makes work better for everyone, while we make work better for you.

BambooHR is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals and will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process.  If you would like to request accommodations, please let your recruiter know.

BambooHR is An Equal Opportunity Employer--M/F/D/V
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