Software Engineer – Platform Security

About the job

FriendliAI is looking for an engineer to architect and build the security foundations of a multi-tenant serverless compute platform running on Kubernetes with hardened container isolation. As a Software Engineer, Platform Security, you will own the security design for both control plane and data plane, implement guardrails as code, and partner closely with Platform/SRE/Infra teams to ship a secure-by-default developer experience. This is a hands-on builder and architect role.

About FriendliAI

FriendliAI is building the world’s best AI inference platform that makes large language and multi-modal models fast, efficient, and deployable at scale. We power high-throughput, low-latency AI workloads for organizations worldwide and integrate directly with Hugging Face, giving developers instant access to over 600,000 open-source models.

We are a small, fast-moving team doing work that matters at one of the most exciting moments in the history of technology. With our world-class inference engine, we are building a platform that the AI industry can actually rely on.

Responsibilities

Design and implement the security architecture for a Kubernetes-based, multi-tenant serverless platform.; Build guardrails as code using Terraform and Helm.; Establish network segmentation and service-mesh policy.; Develop secrets and key management patterns.; Implement runtime detections for containerized workloads.; Design and roll out IAM & workload identity management.; Threat model new features and changes to the overall platform.; Collaborate with engineering to debug production issues, lead post-incident hardening, and automate evidence for compliance controls.

Requirements

5+ years securing cloud-native platforms with a focus on distributed systems and multi-tenancy.; Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent.; Strong hands-on experience with AWS (IAM, VPC/networking, logging/monitoring, …) and Kubernetes/container security.; Proficiency with Terraform and Helm.; Experience building or operating runtime detections for containers/functions.; Strong technical background in backend systems, cloud infrastructure, or AI tooling; Clear written and verbal communication, ability to translate pricing/business rules into robust systems.

Nice to have

Knative or similar serverless-on-K8s frameworks.; Container hardening and sandboxing.; Policy-as-code and admission policy design at scale.; eBPF-based observability, detections, and signal tuning.; Multi-cloud exposure and cross-cloud identity approaches.; Hands-on contributions to SOC 2 / HIPAA control automation and audit evidence pipelines.

Benefits

Flexible working hours; Daily lunch and dinner provided, unlimited snacks and beverages; Supportive and highly collaborative work environment; Health check-up support and top-tier equipment/hardware support; A front-row seat to the generative AI infrastructure revolution; Competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits.