Security Engineer
HeyGen is hiring a Security Engineer in San Francisco, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on HeyGen.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this cybersecurity role is Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- The posting mentions Python, AWS and Drata among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- HeyGen has 19 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Own security posture, cloud infrastructure, AI and agentic system security, and compliance programs at a visual storytelling AI company.
About HeyGen
At HeyGen, our mission is to make visual storytelling accessible to all. Over the last decade, visual content has become the preferred method of information creation, consumption, and retention. But the ability to create such content, in particular videos, continues to be costly and challenging to scale. Our ambition is to build technology that equips more people with the power to reach, captivate, and inspire audiences.
Learn more at www.heygen.com. Visit our Mission and Culture doc here.
Position Summary
As a Security Engineer at HeyGen, you will own the security posture of one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the world. You will partner directly with engineering teams to ship secure features, harden our cloud infrastructure, and build the compliance and trust programs that unlock enterprise deals. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role for an engineer who thinks in threat models and ships code.
Key Responsibilities
- Product & Infrastructure Security: Partner with engineering teams as an embedded security expert — writing code, reviewing architectures, and building secure application features and infrastructure components from the ground up.
- Fraud Detection & Remediation: Design and implement automated fraud detection systems to mitigate platform abuse, credential stuffing, and payment fraud. Partner with product and engineering to build real-time monitoring and rapid-response remediation workflows.
- Cloud & Vulnerability Management: Own the strategy and execution for hardening our AWS/Python infrastructure. Build and run a robust vulnerability management program, including network security, cloud configuration, and remediation workflows.
- AI Security: Serve as HeyGen's point person for AI and agentic system security. As we scale our agentic coding and AI agent products, you will ensure these rollouts are designed and deployed with strong security controls.
- GRC & Compliance: Oversee our SOC 2 compliance operations (currently managed via Drata) and annual audit cycles. Evaluate and roadmap future certifications, including ISO 27001, as the business scales.
- Trust & Safety Oversight: Provide high-level oversight for platform abuse and content moderation (in partnership with growth and avatar teams), and serve as the escalation point for IT security incidents.
Qualifications
- Strong software engineering background with hands-on Python and AWS experience; you write code, not just policies.
- Demonstrated experience securing cloud infrastructure and applications — vulnerability management, network security, IAM, and secrets management.
- Familiarity with GRC frameworks and compliance programs (SOC 2, ISO 27001, or equivalent).
- Excellent communication skills: able to translate threat models for engineers, compliance requirements for auditors, and security architecture for enterprise CISOs.
- Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid scale; you prioritize ruthlessly and know when to build vs. buy.
- Experience with modern security tooling is a plus (Drata, Infisical, Bugcrowd, or equivalents).
Why HeyGen:
- Massive Scale, Unique Problems: We are protecting user identity at one of the fastest growth rates in SaaS history. The security engineering challenges here are genuinely novel.
- Speed with Guardrails: Our security philosophy is not about saying "no." It is about building guardrails that let the engineering team ship fast without introducing unacceptable risk.
- Mature Tooling from Day One: We already run Drata for GRC, Infisical for secrets management, and a private bug bounty program via Bugcrowd. You are not starting from zero.
- Autonomy and Ownership: You will have the visibility and resources to shape HeyGen's entire security roadmap. Small team, big mandate.
How we rate this
Security Engineer at HeyGen 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
- Typical cybersecurity job
- $159k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical cybersecurity figure when pay comes up. 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 project where security engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where cloud security was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where vulnerability management was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where grc was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Security Engineering, Cloud Security, Vulnerability Management, and Grc. 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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