About this role.
Upside is hiring a Staff Application Security Engineer to own and scale its application security program across mobile, web, backend, cloud, and AI systems. The role emphasizes vulnerability management, threat modeling, secure design reviews, remediation leadership, and developer-friendly security guardrails. The engineer will work closely with Cloud Security and product engineering, with particular focus on AWS, GitHub Actions, Python, Terraform, and agentic AI workflow security. This is a senior individual-contributor role requiring demonstrated ability to drive verified risk reduction across teams without direct authority.
Role DNA
A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.
Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.
Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would explain the original risk, how I prioritized it using exploitability and business context, the engineering partners involved, and the control or code change that resolved it. I would also describe how I verified the fix and added a preventive guardrail, such as a CI check, secure template, or detection rule.
I would map the model, prompts, tools, identities, data sources, and execution paths, then identify threats such as prompt injection, unauthorized data access, excessive tool permissions, unsafe actions, and data exfiltration. Controls would include scoped and short-lived credentials, allowlisted tools and actions, strong authorization checks outside the model, input/output validation, audit logging, approval gates for sensitive actions, and adversarial testing.
I prioritize findings using asset criticality, exposure, exploitability, data sensitivity, and compensating controls rather than severity alone. I tune noisy rules, assign clear owners and deadlines, provide actionable remediation guidance, track verified closure, and use recurring trends to create systemic engineering guardrails.
I would assess authentication and authorization boundaries, IAM least privilege, secrets storage and rotation, input validation, logging, encryption, network exposure, error handling, dependency risk, and data access paths. I would also review API Gateway authorization, rate limiting, request validation, and whether the Lambda role can be narrowed to only the required actions and resources.
I would start with willing technical leaders, provide concise role-specific training and reusable review tools, and make the program useful by offering direct access to security expertise and reducing delivery friction. I would define lightweight expectations, recognize meaningful contributions, measure outcomes such as earlier risk discovery and remediation time, and continuously adapt based on champion feedback.
Meet Upside:
We created Upside to transform brick-and-mortar commerce. Our technology uses the sophistication of online retail—profit measurement, attribution, and incrementality—to provide users with more value on their everyday purchases and brick-and-mortar businesses with new, profitable customers. We’ve helped millions of users earn 2 to 3 times more cashback than any other product, and hundreds of thousands of brick-and-mortar businesses earn measurable profit. Billions of dollars in commerce run through the Upside platform every year, and that value goes directly back to our retailer partners, the consumers they serve, and important sustainability initiatives.
The Impact You’ll Make
You’ll report to the Product Security Manager and work closely with our Cloud Security and Engineering teams to scale secure software delivery across Upside. This role owns our application security program, reducing real risk across mobile, web, and cloud systems by driving remediation, building engineering guardrards, and creating security guidance that developers actually use.
You’ll also work both sides of the AI problem: we use AI to do security work, and we secure the AI systems we’re building. If you came into security from a product engineering background, we’d especially love to hear from you.
Own Upside’s application security program, the standards, the vulnerability management pipeline, and the guardrails that stop entire classes of defects from coming back
Drive vulnerability management outcomes by triaging and tuning findings from scanning, code review, and our annual penetration test, then partnering with engineering teams to get fixes shipped and verified
Lead application security reviews and threat models for high-impact work across mobile, web, and backend systems, and document risk decisions with clear mitigation plans
Review and threat model agentic AI workflows, and define security controls for tool use, data access, and action execution
Build and improve the automation that triages findings, prioritizes them with service context, and produces remediation guidance engineers can act on
Build guardrails that scale beyond our team; repository baselines, required checks in GitHub, secure-by-default patterns for AWS workloads, reusable templates, and a security champions program
What You’ll Bring
6+ years in application or product security or equivalent depth in secure software engineering with meaningful application security ownership
Strong Python code review skills, you can open a Lambda, understand what it does, and explain to the engineer who wrote it exactly what’s wrong and why
A track record of shipping security improvements that reduced real risk, not just running scanners or writing policy, you can point to fixes that landed, were verified, and to remediation you drove across teams you didn’t own
Experience with threat modeling and secure design review, engaging with designs before they ship, not only with code after the fact
Practical, everyday use of AI in your security work; this is about how you already work, not a tool you’ve tried once
Working knowledge of our stack: AWS security (Lambda, API Gateway, IAM least privilege, secrets handling) and CI/CD security in GitHub Actions, depth in the underlying mechanics matters more here than years in any one platform
Tools We Use
GitHub: Actions, Advanced Security, Copilot
Python, Terraform
AWS: Lambda, API Gateway, IAM, DynamoDB, S3, SNS, SQS, VPCs
Snowflake, SQL, dbt, Dagster
Claude, Claude Code, Amazon Bedrock
Benefits:
Medical, dental, and vision coverage starting on Day 1
Equity (ISOs)
401(k) program
Family planning programs + paid parental leave
Physical fitness and wellness memberships
Emotional and mental health support programs
Unlimited PTO + 10 paid federal holidays + our annual, week-long Winter Break
Flexible work environment
Lunch reimbursement for in-office employees
Employee Resource Groups
Learning and Development stipend
Transparent culture
Amazing mission!
Diversity and Inclusion:
Diversity drives innovation, and our differences make us stronger. We‘re passionate about building a workplace that represents a variety of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Everyone is welcome here!
If there’s anything we can do to support a disability or special need during your application or interview process, please email accommodations@upside.com.
This email is for accessibility accommodations only, it should not be used to submit job applications.
Notice To Recruiters And Placement Agencies:
This is an in-house search with a dedicated recruiter. Please do not submit resumes to any person or email address at Upside. Upside is not liable for, and will not pay, placement fees for candidates submitted by any party or agency other than its approved recruitment partners.
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