Staff Infrastructure Security Engineer

Ridgeline•Reno, NV

6h•Hybrid

About The Position

Ridgeline is seeking an experienced Staff Infrastructure Security Engineer to drive secure-by-default cloud architecture across product areas and set the technical direction for securing the company’s cloud environments. The role is a recognized technical authority for AWS and cloud security, responsible for driving the security roadmap and representing security expertise across the organization. It partners closely with Infrastructure and Product teams and includes teaching and helping engineers make security an integral part of their work. The engineer will shape cloud security architecture, identify and remediate complex risks, lead high-impact incidents, and develop scalable security platforms, controls, and detection capabilities. The position also influences engineering decisions across multiple organizations, leads complex cross-functional projects, and establishes standards for responsible use of AI in security workflows. The role is based in San Ramon, California, or Reno, Nevada. The typical starting salary range is $186,000–$256,000, with final compensation based on factors including experience and expertise.

Requirements

At least 8 years of relevant experience in cloud security or platform engineering.
Experience independently defining and executing complex projects from planning to production and leading initiatives across multiple teams.
Expert proficiency in at least one programming language; Python is strongly preferred, and Go, Kotlin, or TypeScript are a plus.
AWS experience, especially with IAM, Organizations and SCPs, Identity Center, VPC, Security Groups, Transit Gateway, Load Balancers, EKS, S3, Aurora, DynamoDB, CloudTrail, and CloudWatch.
Expert knowledge of AWS security and most cloud security specialties, including identity, detection, networking, data security, containers and serverless, and governance.
Demonstrated success designing, implementing, and scaling access-management strategies and policy frameworks, including IAM and SCPs.
Deep understanding of cloud workload protection, infrastructure monitoring, and threat detection in AWS-native environments, including risks that tooling may miss.
Fluency with infrastructure as code, such as Terraform, and CI/CD practices.
Experience leading high-impact cloud security incidents as technical lead or incident commander and driving findings through remediation.
Experience building cloud security platforms, detection pipelines, or posture management at organizational scale, with a track record of reducing false positives.
Experience designing AI-augmented security workflows or lightweight agents and automations, with sound judgment about responsible AI experimentation and data use.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain security tradeoffs clearly to engineers, product partners, and executive stakeholders.
Ability to challenge decisions and influence through technical credibility.
Demonstrated ability to make sound architectural tradeoffs across multiple services, improve long-term code and system health, and align stakeholders when changes have cross-team impact.

Nice To Haves

Python proficiency.
Experience with Go, Kotlin, or TypeScript.

Responsibilities

Drive secure-by-default cloud architecture across product areas.
Threat model new infrastructure designs and service adoptions, and define security requirements that eliminate risk classes before systems are built.
Identify complex cloud security risks that automated tooling may miss, including identity chaining, cross-account lateral movement, control-plane and data-plane separation failures, and supply-chain risks.
Perform variant analysis to eradicate risk classes across the cloud environment.
Design AI-augmented analysis workflows that combine manual expertise with automated detection to find risks at scale.
Lead high-impact cloud incidents as technical lead or incident commander.
Assess the real-world exploitability of findings, calibrate risk, drive findings to remediation, and build systemic fixes that reduce risk over time.
Use AI to find patterns across historical findings that reveal systemic weaknesses.
Own or lead development of scalable cloud security platforms, including AWS guardrails and controls such as SCPs, IAM boundaries, managed security services, custom solutions, and policy-as-code.
Architect AI-powered detection and posture-management pipelines that reduce manual effort while maintaining accuracy, and reduce false positives so engineering teams trust the tools.
Embed security into CI/CD and infrastructure automation to ensure deployments are reproducible, testable, and auditable.
Lead strategy for access management, least-privilege enforcement, encryption and key management, and runtime protections across the platform.
Build and champion frameworks for secure platform integrations with third-party cloud services and internal tools.
Shape cloud security decisions across multiple engineering organizations, partnering with Staff+ engineers and platform teams on design and influencing through technical credibility.
Define and execute complex cross-functional projects from planning to production, manage expectations as plans change, and prioritize work that spans multiple cycles.
Set team standards for effective and responsible use of AI in cloud security workflows, including responsible experimentation and data use.
Build lightweight agents and automations that accelerate team outcomes.
Think creatively, take ownership, seek solutions, and communicate clearly.