Description review
Staff Application Security Engineer
Upside · USA · back to the listing
HR standards
49/100
poor
Title ↔ description
88/100
strong
Reads as
Security Engineer
100% confident
What this role officially is
ICT security administrator — ESCO, the EU occupation classification
ICT security administrators plan and carry out security measures to protect information and data from unauthorised access, deliberate attack, theft and corruption.
Also known as: network security administrator, system security administrator, ICT security administrators, IT security administrator
How others title the same work
Large employers
- Security Risk Management Specialist Canonical Ltd.
- Security Software Engineer Canonical Ltd.
- Senior Security Operations Engineer Canonical Ltd.
- Staff Security Operations Engineer Canonical Ltd.
- Ubuntu Security Engineer Canonical Ltd.
Startups
- Security Engineer (Bangalore, India) AiPrise
- Security & Trust Engineer Alex
- Elucid | Senior Security Engineer | Boston, MA | ONSITE (hybrid) | $130k–$170k Elucid
- Factory | Security Engineer | ONSITE, San Francisco, CA | Full-Time Factory
- Factory | Security Engineer | Onsite in San Francisco | Full-time Factory
What the listing never says
- 30 bullet points. Long requirement lists deter qualified candidates, who read them as hard gates. Scope clarity
- No section describes what the person would actually do. Scope clarity
- No pay range published. Candidates cannot tell whether applying is worth their time. Pay transparency
- No location or timezone policy stated, so a candidate cannot tell where they may work from. Scope clarity
The listing, marked up
Nothing in the wording of this listing tripped a check. The scores above still judge how complete and coherent it is.
Meet Upside:
We created Upside to transform brick-and-mortar commerce. Our technology uses the sophistication of online retail—profit measurement, attribution, and incrementality—to provide users with more value on their everyday purchases and brick-and-mortar businesses with new, profitable customers. We’ve helped millions of users earn 2 to 3 times more cashback than any other product, and hundreds of thousands of brick-and-mortar businesses earn measurable profit. Billions of dollars in commerce run through the Upside platform every year, and that value goes directly back to our retailer partners, the consumers they serve, and important sustainability initiatives.
The Impact You'll Make
You'll report to the Product Security Manager and work closely with our Cloud Security and Engineering teams to scale secure software delivery across Upside. This role owns our application security program, reducing real risk across mobile, web, and cloud systems by driving remediation, building engineering guardrards, and creating security guidance that developers actually use.
You'll also work both sides of the AI problem: we use AI to do security work, and we secure the AI systems we're building. If you came into security from a product engineering background, we'd especially love to hear from you.
•
Own Upside's application security program, the standards, the vulnerability management pipeline, and the guardrails that stop entire classes of defects from coming back
•
Drive vulnerability management outcomes by triaging and tuning findings from scanning, code review, and our annual penetration test, then partnering with engineering teams to get fixes shipped and verified
•
Lead application security reviews and threat models for high-impact work across mobile, web, and backend systems, and document risk decisions with clear mitigation plans
•
Review and threat model agentic AI workflows, and define security controls for tool use, data access, and action execution
•
Build and improve the automation that triages findings, prioritizes them with service context, and produces remediation guidance engineers can act on
•
Build guardrails that scale beyond our team; repository baselines, required checks in GitHub, secure-by-default patterns for AWS workloads, reusable templates, and a security champions program
What You'll Bring
•
6+ years in application or product security or equivalent depth in secure software engineering with meaningful application security ownership
•
Strong Python code review skills, you can open a Lambda, understand what it does, and explain to the engineer who wrote it exactly what's wrong and why
•
A track record of shipping security improvements that reduced real risk, not just running scanners or writing policy, you can point to fixes that landed, were verified, and to remediation you drove across teams you didn't own
•
Experience with threat modeling and secure design review, engaging with designs before they ship, not only with code after the fact
•
Practical, everyday use of AI in your security work; this is about how you already work, not a tool you've tried once
•
Working knowledge of our stack: AWS security (Lambda, API Gateway, IAM least privilege, secrets handling) and CI/CD security in GitHub Actions, depth in the underlying mechanics matters more here than years in any one platform
Tools We Use
•
GitHub: Actions, Advanced Security, Copilot
•
Python, Terraform
•
AWS: Lambda, API Gateway, IAM, DynamoDB, S3, SNS, SQS, VPCs
•
Snowflake, SQL, dbt, Dagster
•
Claude, Claude Code, Amazon Bedrock
Benefits:
•
Medical, dental, and vision coverage starting on Day 1
•
Equity (ISOs)
•
401(k) program
•
Family planning programs + paid parental leave
•
Physical fitness and wellness memberships
•
Emotional and mental health support programs
•
Unlimited PTO + 10 paid federal holidays + our annual, week-long Winter Break
•
Flexible work environment
•
Lunch reimbursement for in-office employees
•
Employee Resource Groups
•
Learning and Development stipend
•
Transparent culture
•
Amazing mission!
Diversity and Inclusion:
Diversity drives innovation, and our differences make us stronger. We‘re passionate about building a workplace that represents a variety of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Everyone is welcome here!
If there's anything we can do to support a disability or special need during your application or interview process, please email [email protected].
This email is for accessibility accommodations only, it should not be used to submit job applications.
Notice To Recruiters And Placement Agencies:
This is an in-house search with a dedicated recruiter. Please do not submit resumes to any person or email address at Upside. Upside is not liable for, and will not pay, placement fees for candidates submitted by any party or agency other than its approved recruitment partners.
We created Upside to transform brick-and-mortar commerce. Our technology uses the sophistication of online retail—profit measurement, attribution, and incrementality—to provide users with more value on their everyday purchases and brick-and-mortar businesses with new, profitable customers. We’ve helped millions of users earn 2 to 3 times more cashback than any other product, and hundreds of thousands of brick-and-mortar businesses earn measurable profit. Billions of dollars in commerce run through the Upside platform every year, and that value goes directly back to our retailer partners, the consumers they serve, and important sustainability initiatives.
The Impact You'll Make
You'll report to the Product Security Manager and work closely with our Cloud Security and Engineering teams to scale secure software delivery across Upside. This role owns our application security program, reducing real risk across mobile, web, and cloud systems by driving remediation, building engineering guardrards, and creating security guidance that developers actually use.
You'll also work both sides of the AI problem: we use AI to do security work, and we secure the AI systems we're building. If you came into security from a product engineering background, we'd especially love to hear from you.
•
Own Upside's application security program, the standards, the vulnerability management pipeline, and the guardrails that stop entire classes of defects from coming back
•
Drive vulnerability management outcomes by triaging and tuning findings from scanning, code review, and our annual penetration test, then partnering with engineering teams to get fixes shipped and verified
•
Lead application security reviews and threat models for high-impact work across mobile, web, and backend systems, and document risk decisions with clear mitigation plans
•
Review and threat model agentic AI workflows, and define security controls for tool use, data access, and action execution
•
Build and improve the automation that triages findings, prioritizes them with service context, and produces remediation guidance engineers can act on
•
Build guardrails that scale beyond our team; repository baselines, required checks in GitHub, secure-by-default patterns for AWS workloads, reusable templates, and a security champions program
What You'll Bring
•
6+ years in application or product security or equivalent depth in secure software engineering with meaningful application security ownership
•
Strong Python code review skills, you can open a Lambda, understand what it does, and explain to the engineer who wrote it exactly what's wrong and why
•
A track record of shipping security improvements that reduced real risk, not just running scanners or writing policy, you can point to fixes that landed, were verified, and to remediation you drove across teams you didn't own
•
Experience with threat modeling and secure design review, engaging with designs before they ship, not only with code after the fact
•
Practical, everyday use of AI in your security work; this is about how you already work, not a tool you've tried once
•
Working knowledge of our stack: AWS security (Lambda, API Gateway, IAM least privilege, secrets handling) and CI/CD security in GitHub Actions, depth in the underlying mechanics matters more here than years in any one platform
Tools We Use
•
GitHub: Actions, Advanced Security, Copilot
•
Python, Terraform
•
AWS: Lambda, API Gateway, IAM, DynamoDB, S3, SNS, SQS, VPCs
•
Snowflake, SQL, dbt, Dagster
•
Claude, Claude Code, Amazon Bedrock
Benefits:
•
Medical, dental, and vision coverage starting on Day 1
•
Equity (ISOs)
•
401(k) program
•
Family planning programs + paid parental leave
•
Physical fitness and wellness memberships
•
Emotional and mental health support programs
•
Unlimited PTO + 10 paid federal holidays + our annual, week-long Winter Break
•
Flexible work environment
•
Lunch reimbursement for in-office employees
•
Employee Resource Groups
•
Learning and Development stipend
•
Transparent culture
•
Amazing mission!
Diversity and Inclusion:
Diversity drives innovation, and our differences make us stronger. We‘re passionate about building a workplace that represents a variety of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Everyone is welcome here!
If there's anything we can do to support a disability or special need during your application or interview process, please email [email protected].
This email is for accessibility accommodations only, it should not be used to submit job applications.
Notice To Recruiters And Placement Agencies:
This is an in-house search with a dedicated recruiter. Please do not submit resumes to any person or email address at Upside. Upside is not liable for, and will not pay, placement fees for candidates submitted by any party or agency other than its approved recruitment partners.