Staff Cloud Security Engineer

AnswersNow is a venture-backed digital health company delivering virtual autism care to families. Their mission is to empower and enhance the lives of those affected by autism by making personalized therapy more accessible.

Why this role matters:

AnswersNow is seeking a Staff Cloud Security Engineer to design scalable, secure cloud systems and enable data-driven decision-making. This is their first dedicated security hire, serving as the sole owner of security across their platform, infrastructure, and corporate environment. The role involves setting strategy, building the security program, and performing hands-on work. The engineer will partner directly with the CTO and engineering team, acting as the technical authority on security for customers, auditors, and leadership.

This is a Staff-level role requiring significant autonomy, sound risk-based tradeoffs, and raising the security maturity of the entire organization.

What you’ll do:

Cloud & Infrastructure Security

• Architect, secure, and continuously harden their AWS environment (IAM, VPC design, KMS, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Config, WAF, etc.)
• Secure their serverless and data layers, including Lambda, S3, and PostgreSQL (RDS/Aurora): encryption at rest and in transit, least-privilege access, network isolation, backup integrity, and audit logging
• Implement Infrastructure-as-Code security guardrails and policy-as-code
• Own secrets management, key management, and certificate lifecycle
• Manage and harden Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) infrastructure, including cluster security, network policies, and container runtime security

Application & API Security

• Secure their APIs and application stack: authentication/authorization, session management, rate limiting, input validation, and OWASP Top 10 / API Top 10 risks
• Embed security into the SDLC with threat modeling, secure design reviews, SAST/DAST, dependency and container scanning, and CI/CD pipeline security
• Secure their proprietary real-time video platform (WebRTC/media transport, session access controls, recording storage, and encryption)
• Run their vulnerability management and penetration testing program, including vendor selection, scoping, and remediation tracking

AI Security & Governance

• Establish company-wide AI usage policies and governance frameworks to ensure safe, ethical, and compliant adoption of internal and third-party AI tools
• Architect and secure in-product AI/ML capabilities, protecting against OWASP LLM Top 10 vulnerabilities (e.g., prompt injection, insecure output handling, data poisoning)
• Implement strict data privacy guardrails to prevent unauthorized exposure of PHI/PII in model training, fine-tuning, and prompt contexts
• Define and enforce model security controls, securing model artifacts, API endpoints, supply chain dependencies, and access controls
• Build continuous monitoring, telemetry, and comprehensive audit logging across all AI/ML workflows to support compliance, threat detection, and incident response

Compliance (SOC 2 & HIPAA)

• Own their path to SOC 2 Type I and Type II: scoping, control design, evidence collection, auditor selection and management, and ongoing readiness
• Own ongoing HIPAA Security Rule compliance, including risk assessments, policies, BAAs, breach notification procedures, and audit readiness
• Get the most from Vanta: tune integrations, automate evidence collection, and drive remediation of failing tests
• Maintain the security policy library, risk register, and vendor risk management program
• Support customer and payer security questionnaires and due diligence

Endpoint & Corporate Security

• Work with outsourced IT to manage security for laptops and workstations: MDM, disk encryption, EDR, patching, hardening baselines, and device compliance
• Own identity and access management: SSO, MFA, RBAC, joiner/mover/leaver processes, and periodic access reviews
• Work with People Ops to run security awareness and HIPAA training programs

Detection, Response & Resilience

• Build logging, monitoring, and alerting for the platform and corporate environment (SIEM or equivalent)
• Develop and test their incident response plan, run tabletop exercises, and lead response when incidents occur
• Partner with engineering on disaster recovery, backup, and business continuity planning

Leadership

• Define the security roadmap and communicate risk clearly to the CTO and executive team
• Mentor engineers and build a security-conscious culture, such as a security champions model
• Build the business case for tools, vendors, and additional security headcount

What you bring:

• 8+ years in security engineering, with significant hands-on experience securing production cloud environments, ideally AWS-heavy
• Deep AWS security expertise (IAM, networking, encryption/KMS, logging and detection services, serverless security)
• Experience securing PostgreSQL and other data stores containing regulated or sensitive data
• Strong application and API security background, and the ability to review code and architecture and work effectively with developers
• Direct experience owning or leading a SOC 2 audit (Type I and/or Type II) and HIPAA compliance, ideally in a healthcare or health-tech environment handling PHI
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Pulumi, CloudFormation, or CDK) and CI/CD security
• Experience with AI security, LLM application security, and guarding against OWASP LLM Top 10 vulnerabilities
• Strong incident response experience
• Excellent communication: you can explain risk to engineers, executives, auditors, and customers alike

Nice to have:

• Experience with compliance automation platforms such as Vanta, Drata, or Secureframe
• Experience securing real-time communication or video platforms (WebRTC)
• Familiarity with HITRUST, ISO 27001, or NIST frameworks
• Experience at a startup or scale-up where you built a security program from scratch
• Relevant certifications (AWS Security Specialty, CISSP, CCSP, OSCP, or similar)
• Experience with pediatric or behavioral health data and the added privacy considerations that come with minors' information