Staff Application Security Engineer
Brex is hiring a Staff Application Security Engineer. It pays $240k-$300k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Brex.
Level's read on this job
- Builds AI ●●●● is how Level rates this cybersecurity role: the job is building AI systems.
- Pay on this posting starts 51% higher than the typical cybersecurity posting on Level.
- The posting mentions AI agents, application security and AI security among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Brex has 253 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Lead application security strategy with a primary focus on architecting and securing novel AI, machine learning, and agentic workflows.
Why join us
Brex is the intelligent finance platform that enables companies to spend smarter and move faster in more than 200 markets. By combining global corporate cards and banking with intuitive spend management, bill pay, and travel software, Brex enables founders and finance teams to accelerate operations, gain real-time visibility, and control spend effortlessly. Brex’s AI-native automation and world-class service eliminate manual expense and accounting tasks for customers so they can focus on what matters most. Tens of thousands of the world's best companies run on Brex, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood, Zoom, Plaid, Reddit, and SeatGeek.
Working at Brex allows you to push your limits, challenge the status quo, and collaborate with some of the brightest minds in the industry. We’re committed to building a diverse team and inclusive culture and believe your potential should only be limited by how big you can dream. We make this a reality by empowering you with the tools, resources, and support you need to grow your career.
Engineering at Brex
Engineering at Brex is about building systems that scale with speed and intention. Our teams span Software, Data, Security, and IT, and operate with high autonomy and deep collaboration. We tackle hard technical problems, own our outcomes, and push for excellence at every level — from architecture to deployment. It’s an environment where engineering is a craft, and builders become leaders.
Responsibilities:
- Lead the technical vision and strategic roadmap for the Application Security team, aligning security objectives with Brex's enterprise growth and high-velocity engineering metrics.
- Establish technical standards and secure defaults across the entire engineering organization, fostering a culture of collaborative security excellence and bridging product platforms, infra, and trust.
- Architect and secure novel AI/ML and agentic workflows, applying cutting-edge practices to mitigate risks such as prompt injection, model manipulation, and data poisoning.
- Mentor and coach engineers within the team and across the broader organization, guiding technical growth, helping individuals level up their security expertise, and accelerating team delivery.
- Drive proactive vulnerability discovery and offensive security testing strategies, executing complex attack chains to demonstrate business impact and prioritize cross-functional remediation.
- Partner with Product Platform, Cloud Infrastructure, and Data engineering teams to ensure core primitives, APIs, and microservices are secure by default from design to deployment.
Requirements:
- 8+ years of experience in Application Security, Product Security, or software engineering with a primary focus on offensive and defensive application security.
- Proven track record of technical leadership and team mentorship on complex, multi-quarter security engineering initiatives in a fast-paced environment.
- Deep proficiency and technical expertise in AI security, including hands-on experience securing agentic architectures, LLM gateways, and evaluating adversarial AI vectors.
- Strong systems-thinking capabilities with extensive experience defining secure product development lifecycles, threat modeling complex topologies, and cloud-native container security (AWS, Kubernetes).
- Proficiency in Python, Go, or similar languages to architect internal tooling, pipeline automation, and advanced detection/scanning engines.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity, influence technical leaders, and manage up and out across EPD organizations.
Bonus Points:
- Experience with Kotlin, gRPC, GraphQL, Kubernetes
- Previous experience in building and scaling security teams
- Experience with securing distributed systems in AWS and cloud environments
- Contributions to the wider technical community — open source, public research, CTF participation, blogging, CVEs, or presentations
- Experience submitting to bug bounty or responsible disclosure programs
- Published AI security research or contributions to AI security frameworks
Compensation:
The expected salary range for this role is $240,000 USD - $300,000 USD. However, the starting base pay will depend on a number of factors including the candidate’s location, skills, experience, market demands, and internal pay parity. Depending on the position offered, equity and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package.
Please be aware, job-seekers may be at risk of targeting by malicious actors looking for personal data. Brex recruiters will only reach out via LinkedIn or email with a brex.com domain. Any outreach claiming to be from Brex via other sources should be ignored.
How we rate this
Staff Application Security Engineer at Brex rates 80 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● 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
- $240k
- Typical cybersecurity job
- $159k
This posting starts 51% 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 project where application security was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where ai security was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where threat modeling was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where prompt injection mitigation was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Application Security, AI Security, Threat Modeling, and Prompt Injection Mitigation. 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.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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