Staff Software Engineer, Very Good Security
$160-220k
+ Equity
Security and compliance infrastructure platform
Be an early applicant
Security and compliance infrastructure platform
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$160-220k
+ Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To protect the world’s sensitive data, enabling innovation while ensuring security and privacy.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ years of experience taking personal ownership of outcomes in complex, large-scale distributed systems within mission-critical environments
- Advanced proficiency in AWS ecosystems leveraging Terraform to build reproducible environments
- Strong, hands-on experience with Kubernetes (EKS), Docker, and GitOps workflows (Flux, Argo, GitHub Actions)
- Strong coding skills in Python to automate infrastructure and build operational tools
- Experience implementing Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry at scale
- Solid understanding of cloud security, API Gateways, load balancing, and network isolation, viewing security as a fundamental engineering constraint, not an afterthought
Desirable
- Experience with tokenization, payment processing, or security products
- BA/BS degree
- A knack for out-of-the-box thinking that thrives in a fast-paced startup environment
- Experience designing mandate, credential-provisioning, authentication, attestation, or cryptogram-based workflows
- Experience applying AI developer tools or agentic automation to day-to-day engineering workflows
What the job involves
- Architect Agentic Payment Infrastructure: Lead the design and evolution of Python 3.13+ and FastAPI services powering secure, production-critical agentic payment flows
- Define the Core API Platform: Design APIs and domain models for card enrollment, agentic token provisioning, purchase intents, mandates, device attestation, OTP flows, confirmations, and cryptogram retrieval
- Own Security, Reliability & Scale: Drive architectural decisions across security, scalability, availability, performance, and developer experience for sensitive payment and cryptographic workflows
- Build Deep Observability: Establish consistent patterns for error handling, traceability, structured logging, metrics, and distributed tracing using OpenTelemetry and Prometheus
- Automate Platform Provisioning: Design extensible provisioning workflows using Kubernetes APIs and Custom Resource Definitions
- Set the Quality Bar: Define rigorous unit, integration, acceptance, and end-to-end testing strategies for high-risk payment flows, including canary-safe production validation
- Lead Complex Initiatives: Lead technical design reviews, surface architectural and delivery risks early, and drive cross-functional initiatives from initial exploration through reliable production operation
- Pioneer AI-Native Engineering: Apply AI-assisted development and agentic workflows across the SDLC to accelerate prototyping, testing, refactoring, investigation, and delivery while maintaining a high quality and security bar
- Partner Across the Ecosystem: Collaborate with Product, Security, Infrastructure, Platform, and external card-network partners to translate evolving requirements into secure, scalable systems
Our take
As scaling businesses grow, data security can take a back seat. Very Good Security takes the pressure off by assuming liability for sensitive data and ensuring compliance with one simple integration. It's an enticing proposition that enables its customers to get to market faster while offloading the risks of data custodianship.
VGS’s secured vaults and zero-data approach means clients don’t have to become security geniuses themselves and instead can focus on what’s unique to their business. Competing against TokenEx, HP’s Voltage, Thales’ Vormetric, and more VGS is trying to disrupt the do-it-yourself status quo of the data security industry. VGS also expedites certifications against PCI DSS, SOC2, and GDPR requirements, and reduces the total cost of compliance by up to 70 percent.
VGS has already attracted significant investment as well as an impressive set of customers (including Brex and Deliveroo). With more companies looking for tailored solutions as they transition to the cloud, VGS is developing several new capabilities to further automate compliance controls for customers on its platform.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-1% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Dec 2020
$60m
SERIES C
Oct 2019
$35m
SERIES B
Total funding: $103.5m
Company benefits
- Competitive health benefits including medical, dental, & vision insurance
- VGS stock options
- 401k plan, with employer matching 4% and immediate vesting of employer match
- Life & disability insurance
- Pre-tax flexible spending accounts (dependent and healthcare FSA)
- Flexible work hours and flexible PTO
- 11 US company holidays
- Eligibility for health benefits starts on Day 1!
- New hire home office set up allowance
- Professional learning reimbursement
Company HQ
Tenderloin, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Mahmoud Abdelkader
(Co-Founder)They started their career as a CSC Consulting Software Engineer before 2 years as the ModelsHotel.com CIO and working at Wachovia and eBay. They co-founded Balanced in 2011, leaving their CTO position in 2015 to co-found Very Good Security in April 2016.
Marshall Jones
(Co-Founder)They are a seasoned engineer who has built countless products in the fintech industry. Formerly VP of Engineering at Balanced, a payment system for marketplaces.
Chuck Yu
(CEO)Previously CRO at DriveWealth, Vice President of Digital Partnerships at Visa and Head of Finance and Operations at Point.
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