Founding Security Infrastructure Engineer

Founding Security Infrastructure Engineer

Company: Sela
Location: San Francisco, CA (hybrid, 3-4 days per week in office)
Compensation: $200,000 - $260,000 + competitive equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Visa transfers (OPT, H-1B transfer)

About Sela

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.

The Role

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.

What You Will Do

• 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.

What You Bring

• 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

Nice to Have

• 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

Interview Process

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

Tech Stack

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.