About this opportunity
Greylock Partners lists this Founding Engineer — AI Agent Security opportunity in san francisco, California. Review the employer’s description below for duties, qualifications and application requirements.
Job description
Seed-stage company with fewer than 10 people in San Francisco building an adaptive security layer for autonomous AI agents.
As agents gain access to company data, credentials, and tools, permissions alone cannot determine whether an action serves the user’s goal. This team is building a runtime firewall that evaluates an agent’s intent, context, and actions, blocks harmful behavior, and learns from newly discovered attacks.
The team works closely together in person in San Francisco. Its systems already protect production agent workflows.
Why this role
This is a hands-on founding engineering role building production software for agent security.
The hard problem is making fast, reliable security decisions as agents use tools and data, then turning attacks and production evidence into better defenses. You’ll own ambiguous engineering problems across the product and carry solutions from design through deployment and operation.
You’ll work directly with the founders on technical direction and execution.
What you’ll build
Build and own foundational software that protects AI agents as they read untrusted information, use tools, and act across real environments.
Your strongest area may be inference, models, or agent harnesses. You’ll apply that depth while building the runtime systems, integrations, evaluations, and production workflows that make the product work reliably.
What you’ll work on
Runtime systems that evaluate an agent’s context and actions before it uses tools
Model and inference integrations with strict latency and reliability requirements
Agent and attack-generation harnesses that expose failures and make them reproducible
Evaluation and learning loops built from verified attacks and production outcomes
Software that connects user intent, encountered content, tool calls, and an agent’s sequence of actions
Production architecture, observability, isolation, deployment safety, and recovery
AI-native engineering workflows that increase output while preserving rigorous review and testing
What they’re looking for
Strong software engineering fundamentals demonstrated by personally building and operating substantial production systems
Experience building software for models, agents, or inference in a production setting
Ability to take an ambiguous engineering problem from initial scope through implementation, deployment, and iteration
Judgment about correctness, latency, and reliability when the system’s decisions have real consequences
Range to work across product behavior, systems, and AI components as the problem requires
Initiative and clear communication in a small team where priorities evolve quickly
Strong signals
Owned an AI or agent system from design through production use and iteration
Brought unusual depth in inference optimization, agent harness engineering, or model training to a shipped system
Solved meaningful engineering problems beyond model training or evaluation while shipping an AI product
Turned an unclear technical problem into a working product or durable system
Uses coding agents, automated evaluation, testing, and review to expand engineering output without losing command of the underlying work
Security experience is valuable, but direct experience in agent security is not required
Level and experience
This is a hands-on individual contributor role for engineers with meaningful production software ownership. The team will consider experienced engineers and exceptional early-career builders. The scope and results of your work matter more than a particular title or number of years.
The role is based in San Francisco and is intended for someone who wants to build closely with the team in person.
About Us
Greylock is an early-stage investor in hundreds of remarkable companies including Airbnb, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Workday, Cloudera, Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Coinbase, Palo Alto Networks, among others. More can be found about us here:
Please note: We are not recruiting for any roles within Greylock at this time. This job posting is for direct employment with a startup in our portfolio.
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Worksite address
san francisco, CA, 94199, US
Who can apply
Review the original listing for work authorization, qualifications and employer requirements.