Security Engineer, Kubernetes

We protect the platform that runs X and SpaceXSI. We don’t just report issues, we actively look for real risks and exploits in our Kubernetes environments and turn them into durable fixes and tooling. You will secure the platform behind X and SpaceXSI’s infrastructure, products, and workloads. If you know pod and platform security, think in attack paths, and want to build the defenses that make the platform safer at scale, we want to hear from you.

We Value

Understanding how Kubernetes can actually be abused, not only how it is configured

Shipping practical controls and tooling over writing policy documents

Least privilege and defense-in-depth at fleet scale

Clear findings and fixes that platform teams can act on

Safe, constrained validation that does not put production at risk

Secure the platform end to end: nodes, clusters, pods, roles, tokens, secrets, service-to-service communication, and the supply chain

Find and remediate overprivileged permissions, dangerous pod and workload settings, and escalation paths in operators, admission, networking, identity, and monitoring

Assess our own platform the way an adversary would, including container and pod breakout, privilege escalation, and movement across workloads, using safe and constrained validation, then fix what you find

Design and build security tooling and automation, including AI-assisted analysis, that catches risky configuration and overprivilege before or after it ships

Strengthen identity and secrets handling so workloads receive only the access they need

Improve supply-chain security through secure base images, continuous scanning, and related controls

Review changes that affect RBAC, operators, ServiceAccounts, network policies, and anything running with elevated privileges

Partner with platform and product teams as a security owner, taking problems from identification through rollout

Contribute to fleet-wide hardening, policy enforcement, and safer defaults

3+ years in platform security, Kubernetes security, or offensive security against production infrastructure

Deep knowledge of pod and workload security: privileged containers, capabilities, host namespaces, host path mounts, service accounts, RBAC, admission control, and network isolation

Working knowledge of identity, secrets, workload identity, service-to-service trust, supply chain, runtime, and cloud access

Able to think like an attacker, measure blast radius, and turn the path into a detection, control, or tool

Comfortable with operators, custom resources, Helm, and GitOps workflows

Able to build or modify security tooling in Go, Python, or Rust when a control needs automation

Bonus: Image scanning, SBOMs, secure base images, policy-as-code (Kyverno, OPA), multi-cluster environments, runtime detection, and security testing of customer-facing application

Open to working out of one of our offices: Palo Alto, Austin, DC, or New York.

Experience developing AI-driven security tools or integrating AI into security workflows

Familiarity with Kubernetes-based environments and securing cloud-native infrastructure

Proven ability to drive technical decisions and influence security practices across teams

A passion for challenging the status quo and building transformative security solutions

Strong collaboration skills, with experience working in dynamic, cross-functional teams

A sense of humor and adaptability to thrive in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment

$100,000 - $258,000 USD