Lead Application Security Engineer
About this role
About the Role
This is our first dedicated security hire, and it's a rare chance to define the function from the ground up. You'll own Hightouch's application security posture end-to-end. We have strong engineering fundamentals and a solid foundation; now you'll shape what security looks like here as we scale from 70 to 140+ engineers.
This is a hands-on, high-autonomy role. You'll spend most of your time in the codebase, not in meetings. You’ll be solving hard problems at the intersection of security and distributed systems:
Multi-tenant isolation on a system running ~1M data syncs per day and ingesting 100K+ events/sec
Sub-tenant access control - for multi-team and multi-brand use cases, requiring differentiated access to configuration and data
Security architecture - Build and refine our frameworks for compute isolation and perform threat modeling and hardening of new products
Internet-facing APIs - Our high-throughput, internet-facing architecture services customer data at scale. You’ll improve our rate limiting, abuse detection, and granularity of access control
Multi-Region and Multi-Cloud - Supporting our multi-region and multi-cloud backend, including extending it to launch Hightouch on in new regions to support data residency requirements of our global customer base
You'll own your roadmap. We're not looking for someone to run a checklist — we're looking for someone who can look at our architecture, identify the highest-leverage problems, and go fix them.
About You
You’ve been an early security hire at a SaaS company before and moved the needle on how they approach security. You can read application code, threat model a distributed system, and ship production fixes. You have significant distributed systems expertise so that you can understand and influence what is being built by the product teams and influence from a place of trust.
Experience that's relevant
Being an early security hire (first 1-3) at a SaaS or data infrastructure company
Securing multi-tenant platforms: tenant isolation, authorization models, etc
Cloud security on systems that span more than one cloud and operate against customer-owned accounts
Design and build of data infrastructure as an early engineer, not just a user. You helped secure it from early design or during major redesigns. You understand how it scales and how it’s secured
Privacy-adjacent security (PII handling, data residency, GDPR/CCPA technical controls)
We don't care about certifications. We care about what you've built.
Company at a glance
Hightouch is a San Francisco-based Composable Customer Data Platform founded by Segment alumni that enables organizations to take action on their data. The company serves hundreds of enterprises and achieved a $1.2B valuation in Series C funding.
What happens next
Skip the application pile. I get you in front of the people who decide.
Confirm the fit
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I pitch you to the company
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
A meeting lands on your calendar
When the company wants to meet, I get the call on your calendar. You just show up.
Culture & values
Team focuses on making a meaningful impact for customers
Approach challenges with a first-principles mindset
Move quickly and efficiently
Treat each other with compassion and kindness
Look for team members who are strong communicators
Value growth mindset in team members
Distributed team with members all over the world
Know someone who'd be great for this?
