Lead Cybersecurity Engineer
Visa is hiring a Lead Cybersecurity Engineer in Foster City, United States. It pays $200k-$320k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Visa.
Level's read on this job
- Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this cybersecurity role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- The listed pay starts 25% above the typical cybersecurity posting on Level.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Python, SIEM and Cspm.
- Level classifies it as a lead role.
- Level lists 822 other open roles at Visa.
AI in this role
Design and build cloud-native, AI-driven security platforms and agentic workflows for threat detection and response at scale.
About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.
At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.
Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.
Job Description
Visa’s Cyber Security team is seeking a Cloud Security Architecture with an automation-first mindset to design, build, and operate large‑scale, cloud‑native and AI‑driven security platforms that protect Visa’s global brand, networks, products, and data. This role combines hands‑on engineering, automation‑first security design, and technical leadership in a highly dynamic, high‑impact environment.
The ideal candidate is a strong cloud security engineer and problem solver with deep experience in Python‑based services, cloud security engineering, API‑driven architectures, and automation, and who is excited to apply GenAI and autonomous agent technologies to modern security challenges.
This role plays a critical part in reducing time-to-onboard-workload, time‑to‑detect (TTD) and time‑to‑remediate (TTR) by driving intelligent automation, threat intelligence enrichment, and policy‑as‑code across Visa’s multi‑cloud ecosystem.
Key Responsibilities:
Security Engineering & Platform Development
- Design, develop, and operate large‑scale cyber security platforms that deliver detection, prevention, and response capabilities across cloud and hybrid environments.
- Build cloud‑native, API‑first security services using Python and modern web service frameworks.
- Develop and expand security integration frameworks to interconnect SIEM, CSPM, CNAPP, IAM, network security, and threat intelligence platforms.
- Drive security automation to minimize manual intervention and accelerate incident response workflows.
GenAI & Agentic Security Capabilities
- Design and implement GenAI‑powered security workflows, including:
- Autonomous agents for cloud misconfiguration analysis, policy validation, and remediation recommendations
- AI‑assisted threat triage, alert summarization, and root‑cause analysis
- Intelligent enrichment of security signals using applied threat intelligence
- Build and operate agentic systems that can reason across telemetry, policies, and infrastructure state to propose or execute remediation actions safely.
- Evaluate and adopt emerging LLM, agent orchestration, and AI governance frameworks for enterprise‑grade security use cases.
- Ensure secure, compliant, and auditable use of GenAI, including data handling, prompt safety, access controls, and model risk considerations.
Cloud Security & Automation
- Engineer and enforce cloud security controls across Azure (or AWS) in large‑scale enterprise environments.
- Implement Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IaC) and automation frameworks to provision and manage security controls using tools such as Terraform.
- Drive Policy‑as‑Code and Guardrails, authoring and maintaining policies using:
- Integrate GitOps‑based promotion pipelines (dev → test → prod) with secure remote state management and drift detection.
Threat Detection, Response & Posture Management
- Reduce time‑to‑detect and time‑to‑remediate by automating:
- Threat intelligence ingestion and correlation
- Sensor enrichment and contextual risk scoring
- Design and operate cloud security posture management (CSPM/CNAPP) capabilities using platforms such as Wiz, Prisma Cloud, or Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
- Work across multiple security domains including:
- Cloud firewalls and security groups, DDoS protection, Network proxies, Cloud‑native SIEM platforms (e.g., ADX, Sumo Logic)
Architecture, Innovation & Leadership
- Lead technical design discussions and translate business requirements into secure, scalable architectures.
- Conduct proof‑of‑concepts (POCs) for new technologies, tools, and architectures, evaluate feasibility and drive production adoption.
- Stay current with emerging cloud, security, and AI technologies, proactively assessing their applicability within Visa.
- Act as a technical leader and mentor, raising the engineering and security maturity of the team.
- Contribute to project planning, including cost estimation, timelines, and risk assessment for new security initiatives.
Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.
Qualifications
Basic Qualifications:
- 10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD
- Expert‑level in at least one major cloud platform, Azure preferred.
- Hands‑on experience migrating applications to the cloud and implementing cloud‑native security controls at scale.
- Proven ability to design and implement new security controls based on risk assessments, gaps, and regulatory requirements.
- GenAI, Automation & Engineering
Preferred Qualifications:
- 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD
- Cloud & Security Expertise
- Strong domain expertise in cloud security engineering within multi‑cloud enterprise environments (AWS, Azure).
- Expert‑level certification in at least one major cloud platform, Azure preferred.
- Hands‑on experience migrating applications to the cloud and implementing cloud‑native security controls at scale.
- Proven ability to design and implement new security controls based on risk assessments, gaps, and regulatory requirements.
- GenAI, Automation & Engineering
- Demonstrated experience building GenAI solutions and autonomous agents for cloud security engineering or security operations.
- Strong programming skills in Python (preferred) or Go, with experience in building production‑grade services.
- Expertise in IaC, automation, and GitOps workflows, including secure state management and drift detection.
- Experience with policy‑as‑code and enterprise guardrail enforcement.
- Operational & Leadership Skills
- Ability to independently drive POCs, own implementations end‑to‑end, and transition solutions into production.
- Experience assisting with cost modeling, timelines, and delivery planning for security initiatives.
- Strong understanding of threat management, vulnerability management, and cloud security posture management.
- Excellent communication, collaboration, and technical leadership skills, with the ability to influence across teams.
Information for US Applicants
Work Hours
Varies upon the needs of the department.
Travel Requirements
This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.
Mental/Physical Requirements
This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.
Visa is an EEO Employer
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.How we rate this
Lead Cybersecurity Engineer at Visa rates 65 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in cybersecurity jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $200k
- Typical cybersecurity job
- $160k
This posting starts 25% above the typical cybersecurity job. See cybersecurity jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Tell me about a workflow you automated with AI tools, end to end.
- Tell me about a project where cloud security was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where api security was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where automation was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, AI Automation, Cloud Security, API Security, and Automation. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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