Lead Security Engineer - Penetration Testing & AI Security

About us

HighLevel is an AI-powered business operating system that gives agencies, entrepreneurs and SMBs the infrastructure to build, automate and scale. Today, HighLevel supports SMBs across 150+ countries, fueling community-driven growth rooted in real customer outcomes.

To date, businesses operating on HighLevel have generated over $7 billion in ecosystem value, demonstrating the impact of shared infrastructure at scale. By centralizing conversations, automation and intelligence into one system, we help businesses move faster, reduce complexity and execute efficiently.

Behind the platform, HighLevel powers more than 4 billion API hits and 2.5 billion message events daily. With 250 terabytes of distributed data, 250+ microservices and over 1 million domain names supported, our architecture is built for performance, resilience and long-term scalability.

Our people

With over 2,000 team members across 10+ countries, HighLevel operates as a global, remote-first organization built for speed and ownership. We value initiative, clarity and execution, creating space for ambitious people to build systems that support millions of businesses worldwide. Here, innovation thrives, ideas are celebrated and people come first, no matter where they call home.

Our impact

Every month, HighLevel enables more than 1.5 billion messages, 200 million leads and 20 million conversations for the more than 1 million businesses we support. Behind those numbers are real people building independence, expanding opportunity and creating measurable impact. We’re proud to be a part of that.

Learn more about us on our YouTube Channel or Blog Posts

What You’ll Be Doing

Application Security, Secure SDLC & DevSecOps

• Lead Application Security initiatives across web, mobile, API, microservices, and cloud-native products.
• Conduct architecture reviews, threat modeling, secure design and code reviews, and hands-on security assessments.
• Identify weaknesses in authentication, authorization, tenant isolation, business logic, data protection, and API security.
• Define practical security standards, requirements, guardrails, and reusable secure engineering patterns.
• Improve security testing across CI/CD pipelines using SAST, DAST, SCA, secret scanning, container scanning, and Infrastructure as Code scanning.
• Drive risk-based vulnerability triage and remediation in partnership with engineering teams.
• Develop security automation and promote secure coding through developer guidance, documentation, and training.

AI Security Assessment & Adversarial Testing

• Lead security reviews of LLM applications, AI agents, RAG architectures, machine learning services, and third-party AI integrations.
• Assess AI architectures, including model APIs, data pipelines, vector stores, prompts, fine-tuning workflows, plugins, and agent tool chains.
• Conduct adversarial testing for prompt injection, jailbreaking, sensitive-data disclosure, system-prompt leakage, output manipulation, insecure tool use, excessive agency, and model abuse.
• Evaluate applicable risks involving data poisoning, model inversion, training-data extraction, adversarial evasion, and model exfiltration.
• Test security controls such as guardrails, input/output filtering, access controls, human approvals, logging, monitoring, and abuse detection.
• Develop repeatable AI security testing methodologies, playbooks, automation, and test cases using tools such as Garak, PyRIT, or similar frameworks.
• Assess security and supply-chain risks associated with third-party models, AI platforms, and AI-enabled SaaS products.

Reporting, Collaboration & Leadership

• Produce clear security reports containing evidence, risk ratings, business impact, and actionable remediation guidance.
• Communicate security risks effectively to developers, architects, product leaders, and executive stakeholders.
• Partner with external consultants, researchers, and bug bounty programs for specialized assessments where required.
• Mentor engineers and help establish a security-conscious engineering culture.
• Stay current with developments in Application Security, AI Security, and adversarial testing.

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years of cybersecurity experience, with deep hands-on expertise in Application Security, product security, penetration testing, or security engineering.
• Experience conducting threat modeling, architecture reviews, secure code reviews, penetration testing, and vulnerability validation.
• 1-3 years of AI Security experience, with AI/ML security, adversarial testing of AI systems, or applied AI research with a security focus.
• Strong knowledge of web, mobile, API, and cloud-native security, including OWASP guidance and business-logic risks.
• Strong understanding of authentication and authorization technologies, including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, SAML, and modern access-control models.
• Hands-on DevSecOps experience with CI/CD security automation, SAST, DAST, SCA, secret scanning, containers, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Practical knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, microservices, and cloud security.
• Demonstrated experience assessing or securing LLM applications, RAG systems, AI agents, machine learning models, or AI-enabled products.
• Understanding of AI threats such as prompt injection, jailbreaking, data leakage, insecure tool use, excessive agency, model misuse, and AI supply-chain risks.
• Familiarity with OWASP guidance for LLM applications, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF, and related AI security practices.
• Programming or scripting proficiency in Python, Go, JavaScript, Bash, or a similar language.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience building or scaling Application Security practices within a SaaS or product-led technology organization.
• Hands-on experience red teaming LLM applications, RAG systems, AI agents, or AI-enabled products.
• Experience developing security automation, internal testing tools, or reusable security guardrails.
• Contributions to security research, open-source projects, bug bounty programs, or responsible vulnerability disclosure.
• Relevant certifications such as OSCP, OSWE, GWAPT, GIAC, CISSP, or an AI Security credential.

Equal Employment Opportunity Information

The company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. As an employer subject to affirmative action regulations, we invite you to voluntarily provide the following demographic information. This information is used solely for compliance with government record keeping, reporting, and other legal requirements. Providing this information is voluntary and refusal to do so will not affect your application status. This data will be kept separate from your application and will not be used in the hiring decision.

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