Senior / Staff Security Engineer

Description

At Linear, we're building the product development system for teams and agents. AI is fundamentally changing how software gets built, and we’re shaping the tools this new era requires.

Founded in 2019, Linear has become the platform of choice for more than 50,000 companies (including OpenAI, Coinbase, and Ramp) to plan, build, and ship their products. Today, our team is distributed across North America, Europe, and Australia, and we’re continuing to grow internationally. What unites us is relentless focus, fast execution, and a deep care for software craftsmanship.

At Linear, we are committed to quality. Security is an essential part of that quality — not a layer that we add later, but something we build in from the start. We have a foundational security program we're proud of but, as Linear evolves our product and scales into enterprise, there's meaningful work ahead: staying ahead of vulnerabilities as our attack surface grows, responding fast and cleanly when incidents happen, and hardening our product and infrastructure. As Security Engineer at Linear, you'll be operating in a high-autonomy role with real scope, doing hands-on security work across the product and infrastructure we build.

Responsibilities

• Depending on your experience / skillset and our broader priorities, you could:
• Operate, automate, and extend vulnerability management end-to-end: triage, prioritize, and drive remediation across product, infrastructure, and dependencies, and keep the program’s SLAs meaningful rather than theoretical
• Run our bug bounty program: triage incoming reports, validate severity, work with engineering on fixes, and keep researcher relationships professional and responsive
• Lead product security testing: threat model new features (including AI/agent-facing surfaces), review designs and code for security-relevant risk, and do hands-on testing (manual and tool-assisted) rather than relying solely on scanners
• Be a primary responder for security incidents: lead investigation and containment, drive postmortems, and turn lessons into concrete hardening work
• Own meaningful chunks of our cloud/infra security posture on GCP/k8s/Postgres: harden configurations, close gaps surfaced by audits or scanning, and partner with infra engineering on secure defaults
• Build and maintain security tooling and automation, including using AI/LLM tooling to speed up triage, code review, and repetitive investigation work, so the program scales without linear headcount growth
• Partner with the GRC/Trust function: feed real findings into the risk register and control evidence, and help make sure compliance requirements reflect actual engineering practice

Requirements

• A generalist, senior-level security engineer (5+ years across security engineering, with real depth in at least two of: vulnerability management, product/appsec testing, incident response, and cloud security). We need breadth, rather than a narrow specialist in any one of these.
• Hands-on and technical: you can read and reason about code (we use a lot of TypeScript), you’re comfortable in cloud environments (GCP a plus), and you can go deep on a finding rather than just filing a ticket for someone else to fix. You’re comfortable using AI coding/security tools as force multipliers (Linear Agent, Claude, Codex, etc).
• Calm under pressure: you can lead an incident from first alert through postmortem without needing to be told what to do next
• A builder: you’d rather write a script or ship a tool than repeat a manual process a third time
• A pragmatic risk-reducer: you optimize for actually reducing risk, not for checking a box or maximizing findings count
• Autonomy-oriented: comfortable setting your own priorities, working with significant independence, and knowing when to escalate
• A clear communicator: able to explain a technical finding to a non-technical stakeholder and write it up so it’s actually actionable
• Our tech
• This is a hands-on security engineering role. You'll be running tools, reading/writing code, building detections, working in our cloud environment, and partnering closely with the engineers who build our product. Our stack is fronted by Cloudflare and runs on Google Cloud with k8s, Postgres, and Node.
• For day-to-day work, we use:
• Linear, GitHub, Slack, and Google Workspace for collaboration
• Claude and ChatGPT for general & engineering-specific AI tasks
• Vanta for compliance automation and evidence collection
• Our security-specific tooling includes:
• GitHub Advanced Security
• RunReveal
• SentinelOne

Conditions

Linear is a remote-first company. This role is open to candidates based in North America. You can work from anywhere within this region. We value deep focus and async collaboration, with intentional moments to connect in person through team off-sites, optional co-working, and occasional travel.

For US-based candidates, the expected cash compensation range for this role is $240,000—$282,000. For sales roles, this range represents on-target earnings (OTE), including base salary and variable compensation; for all other roles, it represents base salary. Final compensation is determined based on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. For sales roles, actual earnings vary based on sales performance. Equity is a meaningful part of all offers at Linear.

Learn how we think and work

Read Me a story about our mission

Why and how we do work trials Linear blog post

How we use AI in design feature of Linear's design team

Scaling our real-time sync engine t alk by our cofounder, Tuomas Artman, at Linear's 2023 offsite

Our recent tender offer: Sharing Linear’s growth with the people building it

A note on recruitment fraud: all official Linear hiring communication comes from an @ linear.app email address, and all open roles are listed at linear.app/careers . We never ask candidates for payment or financial information. Suspicious messages can be reported to security@linear.app .

Linear is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

Benefits

• We're a small, focused team that cares deeply about the quality of our work and the people we do it with. Here's what you can expect:
• Competitive salary and equity
• Employee-friendly equity terms including early exercise in the US and extended exercise windows
• Daily meal and coffee stipend on every workday
• Paid co-working space or desk
• Health coverage (based on country requirements)
• 5 weeks paid vacation, plus local statutory holidays
• 4 months paid parental leave
• Paid month off after 4 years & every 2 years thereafter
• Regular team events and off-sites
• Remote-first with no required commute