Security Engineering Lead

ABOUT COGENT

Cogent is an Applied AI Lab building the next generation of AI agents for cybersecurity. AI has fundamentally changed how attacks happen, allowing malicious actors to operate at unprecedented speed and scale. Cogent’s "AI Taskforce" assesses petabytes of enterprise data to remediate these issues before critical breaches occur.

To stay at the cutting edge, we blend frontier research with real-world execution. Alongside our core product work, Cogent Research serves as our applied AI lab, providing the research horsepower needed to make truly agentic security workflows a reality.

Since coming out of stealth, Cogent has experienced rapid growth. We partner with Fortune 500 companies to secure some of the most complex production environments in the world.

We’re backed by Greylock and we’ve built a team with the best minds in applied AI. Our team is comprised of people from:

• Top universities like Stanford, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Waterloo

• Unicorn, high-growth companies like Scale AI, Databricks, Stripe, Tesla, Coinbase

• World class cybersecurity experts from Wiz, Abnormal AI, Zscaler

• Preeminent research labs like Deepmind and SAIL

ABOUT THE ROLE

As Security Lead, you will be both a key architect of our product and a steward of Cogent’s own operational security.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Shape the Cogent product at the frontier of AI and cybersecurity

  • Work hand-in-hand with machine learning engineers to build AI agents grounded in real-world security workflows

  • Contribute deep domain insight to shape product strategy, roadmap, and core capabilities

• Build the world’s first AI-native cybersecurity Org

  • Extend and evolve Cogent’s security posture, systems, and incident response capabilities to create the strongest cyber program in the industry

  • Implement processes and tools to protect Cogent and our customers end to end

• Educate the market and elevate the industry

  • Write thought-provoking content, partner with customers, and speak credibly about the role of AI in vulnerability management

  • Help define how the industry thinks about autonomous security

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

You are a top 1% builder who thrives at the intersection of security and engineering. You bring:

• 10+ years of deep, hands-on experience in security engineering

• Expertise in vulnerability management across the attack surface

• Fluency in Python or a comparable language, with a passion for automation

• A track record of operating at scale in high-stakes, fast-paced environments

• A bias for clarity, velocity, and technical rigor

• (Bonus) Experience working closely with ML, AI, or data science teams

FOR CALIFORNIA BASED APPLICANTS

The standard base salary range for this position is $100,000 - $300,000 annually. Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits.

We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse company. We do not discriminate based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, civil or family status, age, disability, or race.