Staff Cloud Security Engineer

📋 Job Overview

We’re looking for a Staff Cloud Security Engineer who thrives on designing scalable, secure cloud systems and enabling data-driven decision-making. This is our first dedicated security hire and the single owner of security across our platform, infrastructure, and corporate environment. You'll set the strategy, build the program, and do the hands-on work. You'll partner directly with the CTO and engineering team, and you'll be the technical authority on security for customers, auditors, and leadership.

🏢 About AnswersNow

AnswersNow is a venture-backed digital health company delivering virtual autism care to families. Our mission is to empower and enhance the lives of those affected by autism by making personalized therapy more accessible. We connect families with expert clinicians quickly — often moving from assessment to therapy within weeks, without waitlists or commutes — and deliver outcomes that parents describe as life-changing.

🎯 The Role

This is a Staff-level role. We expect you to operate with significant autonomy, make sound risk-based tradeoffs, and raise the security maturity of the whole organization.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Architect, secure, and continuously harden our AWS environment (IAM, VPC design, KMS, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Config, WAF, etc.)
• Secure our serverless and data layers, including Lambda, S3, and PostgreSQL (RDS/Aurora): encryption at rest and in transit, least-privilege access, network isolation, backup integrity, and audit logging
• Implement Infrastructure-as-Code security guardrails and policy-as-code
• Own secrets management, key management, and certificate lifecycle
• Manage and harden Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) infrastructure, including cluster security, network policies, and container runtime security
• Secure our APIs and application stack: authentication/authorization, session management, rate limiting, input validation, and OWASP Top 10 / API Top 10 risks
• Embed security into the SDLC with threat modeling, secure design reviews, SAST/DAST, dependency and container scanning, and CI/CD pipeline security
• Secure our proprietary real-time video platform (WebRTC/media transport, session access controls, recording storage, and encryption)
• Run our vulnerability management and penetration testing program, including vendor selection, scoping, and remediation tracking
• Establish company-wide AI usage policies and governance frameworks to ensure safe, ethical, and compliant adoption of internal and third-party AI tools
• Architect and secure in-product AI/ML capabilities, protecting against OWASP LLM Top 10 vulnerabilities (e.g., prompt injection, insecure output handling, data poisoning)
• Implement strict data privacy guardrails to prevent unauthorized exposure of PHI/PII in model training, fine-tuning, and prompt contexts
• Define and enforce model security controls, securing model artifacts, API endpoints, supply chain dependencies, and access controls
• Build continuous monitoring, telemetry, and comprehensive audit logging across all AI/ML workflows to support compliance, threat detection, and incident response
• Own our path to SOC 2 Type I and Type II: scoping, control design, evidence collection, auditor selection and management, and ongoing readiness
• Own ongoing HIPAA Security Rule compliance, including risk assessments, policies, BAAs, breach notification procedures, and audit readiness
• Get the most from Vanta: tune integrations, automate evidence collection, and drive remediation of failing tests
• Maintain the security policy library, risk register, and vendor risk management program
• Support customer and payer security questionnaires and due diligence
• Work with outsourced IT to manage security for laptops and workstations: MDM, disk encryption, EDR, patching, hardening baselines, and device compliance
• Own identity and access management: SSO, MFA, RBAC, joiner/mover/leaver processes, and periodic access reviews
• Work with People ops to run security awareness and HIPAA training programs
• Build logging, monitoring, and alerting for the platform and corporate environment (SIEM or equivalent)
• Develop and test our incident response plan, run tabletop exercises, and lead response when incidents occur
• Partner with engineering on disaster recovery, backup, and business continuity planning
• Define the security roadmap and communicate risk clearly to the CTO and executive team
• Mentor engineers and build a security-conscious culture, such as a security champions model
• Build the business case for tools, vendors, and (eventually) additional security headcount

📌 Required Qualifications

• 8+ years in security engineering, with significant hands-on experience securing production cloud environments, ideally AWS-heavy
• Deep AWS security expertise (IAM, networking, encryption/KMS, logging and detection services, serverless security)
• Experience securing PostgreSQL and other data stores containing regulated or sensitive data
• Strong application and API security background, and the ability to review code and architecture and work effectively with developers
• Direct experience owning or leading a SOC 2 audit (Type I and/or Type II) and HIPAA compliance, ideally in a healthcare or health-tech environment handling PHI
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Pulumi, CloudFormation, or CDK) and CI/CD security
• Experience with AI security, LLM application security, and guarding against OWASP LLM Top 10 vulnerabilities
• Strong incident response experience
• Excellent communication: you can explain risk to engineers, executives, auditors, and leadership

🎁 Benefits

$150K – $215K • Offers Equity • Potential to move to W2 full-time

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

Must be authorized to work in the United States.