Partner 34, Lead, Security Engineering

Founded in Silicon Valley in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) is a venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. We are stage agnostic. We invest in seed to venture to growth-stage technology companies across AI bio healthcare consumer crypto enterprise fintech games and companies building toward American dynamism. a16z has $100B under management across multiple funds.

Weve established a team that is defined by respect for the entrepreneur and the company-building process; we know what its like to be in the founders shoes. Weve invested in companies like Anduril Airbnb Coinbase Cursor Databricks Deel Figma GitHub Roblox SpaceX and Stripe. Our team is at the forefront of new technology helping founders and their companies impact and change the world.

The Role

Were hiring a Security Engineering Lead to build and shape a16zs security engineering team. This is a hands-on role - youll spend a real portion of your time in AI security conversations code reviews architecture conversations and the harder build decisions.

Youll own application security enterprise security and cloud security across the firm and youll partner closely with our internal engineering organization (ASG) on the security of everything they ship including the AI tooling thats increasingly central to how the firm runs. Youll report to the Head of Cybersecurity and work day to day with the SecOps Lead ASG a16zs CTO and IT to make security show up as a partner not a gate.

Venture capital firms face targeted sophisticated threats capital call wire fraud social engineering vishing and threat actors who specifically pursue firms in this space. Your work protects the firm our LPs and our portfolio companies.

This role requires an in-office presence 2 days a week in our San Francisco CA office.

To join our team you should be excited to:

• Own AppSec and CloudSec across AWS and GCP including the roadmap the tooling stack and the engineering partnership
• Help secure a16zs AI work including internal AI tooling agent governance model risk and prompt injection defense
• Build a partnership with engineering where security shows up early not after the fact
• Stay technical day to day - code reviews architecture conversations threat models and the harder build calls
• Run and support cross-functional initiatives that span technical and non-technical teams across the firm and own the relationships behind them

Minimum Qualifications

• 7 years of security engineering experience or equivalent demonstrated impact with depth in both AppSec and CloudSec
• Track record of leading cross-functional projects and managing senior stakeholders
• Experience leading or significantly contributing to small teams (3 to 5 people). Formal management experience preferred but not required
• Comfortable running code reviews threat models and architecture discussions yourself
• Strong working knowledge of modern cloud and SDLC tooling (Terraform Kubernetes GitHub Actions SAST SCA secrets scanning)
• Experience operating in environments where security needs to enable the business rather than gate it
• AI security knowledge including model risk prompt injection and agent governance. This is a growing area for us
• Experience translating technical security concepts decisions and trade-offs into terms non-technical audiences across the firm can act on
• Low ego high empathy and the capacity to collaborate effectively with diverse teams

The anticipated salary range for this role is between $295000 - $347000 actual starting pay may vary based on a range of factors which can include experience skills and scope.

This role is eligible to participate in the a16z carry program and various discretionary bonus programs as well as benefit and perquisite plans including health dental vision disability life insurance 401K plan vacation and sick leave.

a16z culture

• We do only first class business and only in a first class way
• We take a long view of relationships because we are in the relationship business
• We believe in the future and bet the firm that way
• We are all different we recognize that and we win
• We celebrate the good times
• We do it for the team
• We play to win

At a16z we are always looking to hire the absolute best talent and recognize that diversity in our experiences and backgrounds is what makes us stronger. We hire candidates of any race color ancestry religion sex national origin sexual orientation gender identity age marital or family status disability Veteran status and any other status. These differences are what enables us to work towards the future we envision for ourselves our portfolio companies and the World.

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Andreessen Horowitz hereby reserves the right to make use of any unsolicited resumes received from outside recruiting agencies and / or individual recruiters without being responsible for payment of any fees asserted from the use of unsolicited resumes.