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Security Engineer, Red Team

Whatnot

San Francisco, CAFull-timePosted 5 days agoStill listed 1 day ago

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At a glance

Compensation
No compensation found
Location
San Francisco, CA
Schedule
Full-time
Work Authorization
Not specified

Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.

Job overview

Whatnot is hiring a Red Team Engineer to identify weaknesses across its infrastructure and scale offensive testing with AI tools and agents. The role plans authorized red team operations, builds AI-assisted testing harnesses, tests the company’s AI systems, and works with Blue Team partners on purple team engagements. The engineer turns findings into actionable fixes across cloud, network, application, identity, and CI/CD layers.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

Python (Programming Language), nice to haveOffensive Security, nice to havePenetration Testing, nice to haveCloud Computing Security, nice to haveActive Directory, nice to haveKubernetes, nice to haveDevOps, nice to haveRed Teaming, requiredLLM Workflows, requiredAgent Orchestration, requiredCloud Security, requiredIAM Abuse, requiredActive Directory Attacks, requiredIdentity Attacks, requiredKubernetes Security, requiredContainer Escapes, requiredWeb Exploitation, requiredAPI Exploitation, requiredCI/CD Security, requiredSupply Chain Attacks, requiredAI Security, requiredScope Judgment, requiredWritten Communication, required

Qualifications

3+ Years Offensive Security Experience, required

Benefits

Paid Time Off
Medical Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
401(k) Match

Full job description

🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops. As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact. We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce. 💻 Role

  • Plan and run authorized red team operations across cloud (AWS), Kubernetes, networks, identity systems, SaaS, and internal applications, under written rules of engagement.

  • Build and maintain AI-assisted testing harnesses: agent loops that run recon, attack-path discovery, fuzzing, and exploit validation with logging, scoping controls, and human approval gates.

  • Use LLMs and agentic tools to speed up vulnerability research, payload and test-case generation, code review, and report drafting, and measure where they help and where they mislead.

  • Red team our own AI systems: prompt injection, tool and connector abuse, data exfiltration, model and agent permission boundaries, and supply chain risk in AI dependencies.

  • Emulate realistic adversaries using MITRE ATT&CK and ATLAS, chaining findings into end-to-end attack paths rather than isolated bugs.

  • Run purple team exercises with detection engineering and incident response, and tune detections based on what your tests evade.

  • Write clear findings with reproduction steps, impact, and recommended fixes; track remediation to closure and retest.

  • Automate regression tests so fixed weaknesses stay fixed, and feed results into CI/CD pipelines.

  • Document and share techniques, tooling, and lessons learned with engineering teams.

  • Work collaboratively with Whatnot’s Blue Team on Purple Team engagements to help strengthen Whatnot’s overall security posture.

👋 You Curious about who thrives at Whatnot? We’ve found that low ego, a growth mindset, and leaning into action and high impact goes a long way here. As our next Red Team Engineer you’ll find weaknesses in our infrastructure before real attackers do. You will use AI tools and agents to scale offensive testing, build the harnesses that run it, and turn findings into fixes across cloud, network, application, identity and CI/CD layers.

  • 3+ years in offensive security, red teaming, or penetration testing, with real engagements against production-scale environments.

  • Strong programming skills in Python; you write your own tooling instead of only running others.

  • Hands-on experience building LLM-powered workflows or agents (tool use, orchestration, evaluation, guardrails), not just prompting a chat window.

  • Deep knowledge of at least two areas: cloud security and IAM abuse, Active Directory or identity attacks, Kubernetes and container escapes, web and API exploitation, CI/CD and supply chain attacks.

  • Working knowledge of AI-specific risks: prompt injection, insecure tool use, data leakage, excessive agent permissions, and model supply chain issues.

  • Sound judgment on scope, safety, and blast radius; you know how to test production-adjacent systems without causing outages.

  • Clear written communication: reports an engineer can act on and an executive can skim.

🎁 Benefits

  • Generous Holiday and Time off Policy

  • Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision

  • Work From Home Support

  • Home office setup allowance

  • Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet

  • Care benefits

  • Monthly allowance for wellness

  • Annual allowance towards Childcare

  • Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses

  • Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally

  • Monthly allowance to dogfood the app

  • All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!).

  • Parental Leave

  • 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.

Please note: Whatnot will only contact you through official @whatnot.com email addresses. If you see an email impersonating a Whatnot recruiter, please disregard and report it as spam.

💛 EOE Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.

How this job compares

Set against the 4,192 open Security Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 11, 2026.

Pay
  • This postingNot listed
  • California median$165–250K/yr586 salary ranges
  • US median$60–70/hr73 hourly ranges
Openings
Olive Jobs lists 711 open Security Engineer jobs in California and 4,192 across the US. 10% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in California
Experience
This posting asks for at least 3 years of experience — less than three in four Security Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for (median 5 years, across 3,633 postings).
Education
1,104 of the 4,192 open Security Engineer jobs (26%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 11, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.

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