Founding Security Infrastructure Engineer

Company: Sela
Location: San Francisco CA (hybrid 3-4 days per week in office)
Compensation: $200000 - $260000 competitive equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Visa transfers (OPT H-1B transfer)

Sela builds customizable AI phone sales agents that achieve superhuman conversion rates for mortgage lenders. It has grown from $0 to $13M in revenue in 20 months without a dedicated sales or marketing team and already counts 5 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks as enterprise customers.

Founded in 2024 Sela has about 15 people in San Francisco and has raised $21M through Series A.

Sela is hiring its first dedicated security hire (5 years) to own and build the entire security and privacy program from the ground up across cloud infrastructure AI systems and enterprise compliance. This is a true 0-to-1 role for someone who has built or matured security at a fast-growing startup and is deeply hands-on: implementing systems and controls not just writing policy while keeping a fast team moving.

• Build and own the security program end to end: cloud infrastructure security IAM secrets management encryption and data isolation across AWS.
• Own SOC 2 Type II compliance including the observation period vendors and internal policy adherence.
• Design controls for how internal AI agents access systems with auditing protection against unauthorized access and AI use policies.
• Manage permissions and data protection for sensitive customer data (tokenization anonymization access) without slowing development.
• Lead customer security reviews manage third-party penetration testing and evaluate external tools security posture.

• 5 years in cloud or infrastructure security engineering ideally on AWS
• Built or owned cloud/infra security at a fast-growing startup or a company with a high engineering bar
• Cloud security depth: IAM networking encryption secrets management
• Clear structured articulation of security decisions under technical questioning
• Active use of AI tools in your workflow
• Based in San Francisco and able to work in office at least 3 days a week

• One of the first security hires at a VC-backed startup
• SOC 2 Type II or similar compliance programs
• Deep application security expertise
• Terraform Kubernetes or CI/CD security tooling
• Securing AI/LLM applications or agent workflows

Initial screen with a founder (30 min) technical interview (60 min) system design interview (1 hour) onsite.

AWS IAM Terraform Kubernetes CI/CD SOC 2 Python infrastructure as code

REVENUE: 14.87% of first-year salary. Est. fee per hire $30K-$39K; 1 seat(s).

TARGET COMPANIES (client (Stripe/Databricks/AWS named) suggested): Stripe Databricks AWS Vanta Wiz Ramp Plaid.

BEST-FIT CANDIDATE: 5 yrs; hands-on AWS cloud/infra security; built security at fast-growing startup; IAM/encryption/secrets depth; visa: transfers only; location: SF 3-4 days. Avoid contractors/consultants policy-only GRC legacy enterprise (IBM/Cisco/Oracle) backgrounds.