[Hiring] Staff Application Security Engineer @Apollo.io

Role Description

The Staff Application Security Engineer leads application security strategy for Apollo’s Security department and delivers it through hands-on work and technical leadership. This role takes on the hardest AppSec problems across product, platform, and AI-powered features, including problems with no established playbook.

The role shapes the roadmaps of Engineering, Product, and Platform teams so secure patterns become the default, and sets the AppSec standard that helps many teams build securely without relying on any single person.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead Apollo’s multi-year AppSec strategy and turn it into multi-quarter, cross-team initiatives that move Security department KRs.
• Report progress, risks, and tradeoffs to Security leadership on a regular cadence.
• Shape Engineering, Product, Platform, and Data roadmaps so security work is planned in early.
• Represent AppSec in cross-department decisions.
• Set the secure design, code review, and risk model standards used across the department and adjacent engineering teams.
• Mentor senior engineers and security champions, grow the champions program, and help raise the hiring bar.
• Lead security architecture reviews and threat modeling for ambiguous, high-scale, multi-team systems.
• Design and drive adoption of secure-by-default building blocks.
• Shape vulnerability management across internal reviews, bug bounty, pentests, and SCA and runtime findings.
• Stay hands-on for the hardest cases: read code across teams, develop exploits, test bypasses, and lead variant analysis and staged remediation across teams.
• Set the standard for AI-augmented AppSec in the department.
• Define how Apollo secures its AI systems and agent features.

What Good Looks Like

• Owns AppSec strategy across a multi-year horizon and gets it committed in other teams’ roadmaps.
• Solves ambiguous, no-playbook problems and defines the approach for others to follow.
• Makes hard risk calls under ambiguity and aligns technical and non-technical leaders without formal authority.
• Builds guardrails, standards, and people so AppSec scales beyond any one person.

Required Skills & Experience

• A track record of leading AppSec strategy that changed how several engineering teams build, with measurable results, typically backed by 10+ years in software engineering or application security.
• Expert code review, penetration testing, and exploit development skills.
• Strong software development skills and the ability to ship production code.
• Deep experience with secure architecture and authentication and authorization patterns.
• Hands-on experience securing AI-powered systems or agent features.
• The judgment to make hard risk calls under ambiguity.
• The influence to align technical and non-technical leaders without formal authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading security for AI-native products, internal agents, or AI-assisted engineering workflows at scale.
• Experience building or scaling a security champions or developer enablement program.
• Public security work, such as CVEs, research, talks, or open-source tools.

Example Success Outcomes

• An AppSec strategy tied to Security department KRs, with supporting work committed in other teams’ roadmaps.
• A measurable drop in high-risk vulnerability classes, backed by shared guardrails or libraries.
• AI-assisted AppSec workflows adopted by teams outside Security, with clear gains in speed or signal quality.

Our Tech Stack

• React on the front end
• Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Python, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch on the backend
• Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform in infrastructure
• GCP for cloud

Pay Transparency Range

$225,400 — $281,800 USD

Benefits

• Equity
• Company bonus or sales commissions/bonuses
• 401(k) plan
• At least 10 paid holidays per year
• Flex PTO and parental leave
• Employee assistance program and wellbeing benefits
• Global travel coverage
• Life/AD&D/STD/LTD insurance
• FSA/HSA and medical, dental, and vision benefits

Why You’ll Love Working at Apollo

At Apollo, we’re driven by a shared mission: to help our customers unlock their full revenue potential. That’s why we take extreme ownership of our work, move with focus and urgency, and learn voraciously to stay ahead.

We invest deeply in your growth, ensuring you have the resources, support, and autonomy to own your role and make a real impact. Collaboration is at our core—we’re all for one, meaning you’ll have a team across departments ready to help you succeed. We encourage bold ideas and courageous action, giving you the freedom to experiment, take smart risks, and drive big wins.

If you’re looking for a place where your work matters, where you can push boundaries, and where your career can thrive—Apollo is the place for you.