Senior Software Engineer, Security

Unified Identity Securing Classic and AI Infrastructure

Teleport, the AI Infrastructure Identity Company, prepares organizations for an AI future by establishing a unified identity layer for infrastructure, with humans, machines, workloads, and AI agents secured cryptographically with a hardware root of trust rather than vulnerable credentials. By replacing fragmented identity and access management systems with Infrastructure Identity, Teleport scales zero trust across cloud and on-prem environments, eliminating the complexity and risk created by identity fragmentation and credential sprawl. Teleport protects infrastructure from identity attacks, accelerates engineering by reducing infrastructure complexity, and secures non-deterministic agentic workflows. Headquartered in Oakland, CA, Teleport operates globally, with industry-leading customers such as Nasdaq, IBM, Doordash, and Elastic.

Our Vision

Today's computing environments have too much complexity, too many network boundaries, and too little trust. Complexity slows engineers down and leads to human errors. Complex systems can’t be secure despite the red tape of bureaucracy. We make trusted computing simple. This gives engineers the freedom to move and build a better future.

Why Teleport

Teleport addresses the overlooked intersection between cybersecurity and infrastructure—an area companies have historically tried to manage through a fragmented mix of tools like PAM, network-centric controls, and fragmented secrets management. This approach was already inefficient, but it fundamentally breaks down in the era of AI.

AI changes the landscape in three critical ways. First, non-human, machine, and AI identities now outnumber human ones, driving massive secrets sprawl while worsening anonymity. Second, anonymity is incompatible with AI workloads: these systems are inherently non-deterministic, operate across many services and environments, and therefore require strong identity, continuous trust, and end-to-end visibility to function safely and correctly. Third, the non-deterministic nature of AI makes reliability and scalability non-negotiable—systems must be resilient, observable, and with access control guardrails, because failures and unexpected behavior cannot be handled with static controls or manual intervention.

Solving this problem requires a fundamentally different approach: a unified identity layer that spans machines, workloads, humans, and agents. Identity becomes the security control plane that replaces network location and long-lived secrets as the basis of trust. Ephemeral privileges are critical in this model—privileges must be granted just-in-time, limited to the task at hand, and automatically expire, dramatically reducing blast radius in systems where behavior cannot be fully predicted. Finally, real-time intelligence is essential: in fast-moving, AI-driven environments, access decisions must continuously adapt to context, behavior, and system state, rather than relying on static policies defined in advance.

Teleport addresses the growing gap between today’s cyber and infrastructure security posture and what modern, AI-driven systems actually require. As AI systems proliferate, attack surfaces and pathways multiply, giving adversaries unprecedented leverage. The result is an inflection point: without re-anchoring security and infrastructure around identity, real-time trust, and ephemeral privileges, the volume and impact of security breaches will only accelerate.

About Us

Teleport is the Infrastructure Identity Company, modernizing identity, access, and policy for infrastructure, improving engineering velocity and resiliency of critical infrastructure against human factors and/or compromise.

We are a fast-growing, well-funded Y-Combinator company. We value our craft, are strong supporters of work/life balance, and embrace a culture of humility, honesty, and transparency.

About This Job

We are looking for security-focused software engineers to work on Teleport’s Security Engineering and Defense and Intelligence teams.

_Security Engineering

_You will work on problems ranging from cryptography and networking to security automation and AI agents.

You will work throughout the Engineering team on the full product lifecycle from reviewing RFDs for proposed designs, code review, vulnerability testing, and documentation.

Teleport is an open core project and most of the code you review and write will be open source and written in Go (or Rust).

_Defense and Intelligence

_You will work with our detection and response stack: e.g. Panther, Wiz, Jamf Protect, and Temporal to stop breaches.

You will solve for false positives, detection coverage, and response automation by writing code and building AI agents.

You will work with your security teammates and the broader engineering team to triage and tune detection and response logic with a tight feedback loop.

Projects you may work on

• Reviewing RFDs from engineers on a variety of proposed projects for security and quality.
• Pairing with the Cloud team to deploy service control policies (SCPs) in AWS to prevent undesired configurations.
• Hunting for vulnerabilities using both traditional scanning tools and LLM / AI tools in innovative and creative ways.
• Automating routine security and compliance processes to increase effectiveness and decrease busywork.
• Implementing and maintaining log pipelines for valuable event data sources like critical SaaS apps or endpoint telemetry.
• Engaging with the best red teams in the world to test and harden our detection and response capabilities.
• Building response automation to reduce the risk of advanced attacks against Teleport systems.
• Contributing to the Teleport product where we can improve the ability to defend for both us and our customers.
• Ensuring that nobody (including you) is overwhelmed with false positive / noisy alerts through a tight feedback loop.

Requirements

• Go or Rust experience
• Security experience is a plus
• Cryptography engineering experience is a plus

Interview Process

• You will join 30 minute intro call and we will walk you through the compensation, interview process and requirements
• You join a Slack channel and submit a coding challenge in Go using Github

Benefits

• Extensive health coverage
• Annual expense budget
• Rest & recovery policies that maximize leave and your ability to recharge
• Investment in your future with retirement savings plans
• Equity in a US $1.1-bn business
• Professional development opportunities

Teleport is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any classifications protected by federal, state, or local law.

Candidate Privacy Notice: For information about our collection and processing of job applicant personal data for this position, please see our Job Applicant Privacy Policy and Notice of Collection at https://goteleport.com/legal/apply/job-applicant/

The Benefits

While many companies flaunt their benefits and perks to convince you to join their company, we believe your career is more important than that. That’s why we focus on making your day-to-day the best it can be while empowering you to achieve your goals and aspirations.

What does that mean?

• It means you’ll have the autonomy to make your own decisions and focus on what’s important to you and your role.
• It means having access to a senior team that supports you and wants to see you succeed.
• You’ll have a smart team you can learn from, collaborate with, and grow with.
• It means being able to make an impact and have a voice in the future of the feature, product or company direction. We don’t just leave you to focus on a niche. We allow you to spread your wings and take advantage of opportunities, challenging projects and exciting problems.
• It means removing the bureaucracy and red tape that stifles innovation while giving you access to all the information you need to build and take action more quickly.
• It means allowing you to have the career you’ve always wanted today, rather than having to “earn your stripes” and wait for the right moment. If you’re good enough, you’re good enough.

But we don’t stop there.

In Addition To The Career Opportunities At Teleport, We Offer a Whole Range Of Benefits That Help You To Maximize Your Future, Including:

• Extensive health coverage
• Annual expense budget
• Rest & recovery policies that maximize leave and your ability to recharge
• Investment in your future with retirement savings plans
• Equity in a US $1.1-bn business
• Professional development opportunities

Do you have what it takes?

Get to use (and know) Teleport through our unique interview process

At Teleport, we do things a bit differently. And when we say we only hire top talent, we actually mean it. Because of this, our interview process is different too - and we’re proud of it. We let your work do the talking. We don’t go in for six rounds of interviews, live whiteboard or live-coding. We don’t hire people that can talk a good game. We only want the best. And for that, we need to see what you can do, in your own time, in your own way. For real.

But interviews are a two-way street. Through the project, you’ll get a real taste of life at Teleport, including:

• We’re flexible - you’ll have plenty of time to complete your project, if life gets in the way, that’s ok. We can - work around you.
• We give you autonomy - you’ll have the space and freedom to figure things out, make decisions, and problem-solve.
• We’re collaborative - Got questions?
• We have answers. You’ll have support from your team - the one you’ll be working with day in day out if you’re successful in getting the role.
• We progress careers - During the project, see how much you learn. That’s what working at Teleport is like. We like learning, on the job. All-the-time.
• We can move fast (if you can) - two weeks sound like a long time? No problem? Early submissions are fine, and we’ll keep the process moving.

Think you’ve got what it takes? We’d love to see it! Unconvinced? We can guarantee three things:

• It’ll challenge you.
• You'll learn a lot.
• If you love the process, you'll love working at Teleport.

Teleport is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any classifications protected by federal, state, or local law.

Candidate Privacy Notice: For information about our collection and processing of job applicant personal data for this position, please see our Job Applicant Privacy Policy and Notice of Collection at https://goteleport.com/legal/apply/job-applicant/

Compensation Range: $189,040 - $342,000