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Security Engineering Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

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Security Engineering information

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$60.7K

$150.8K

$202.8K

How much do security engineering jobs pay per year?

As of Aug 10, 2026, the average yearly pay for security engineering in California is $150,773.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $141,100.00 and $156,400.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What do you do as a security engineer?

A security engineer designs, implements, and maintains security systems to protect an organization’s networks, systems, and data. They analyze vulnerabilities, develop security protocols, and use tools like firewalls and intrusion detection systems to prevent cyber threats. Strong knowledge of cybersecurity principles and certifications such as CISSP or CEH are often required.

What are some common challenges security engineers face when working with cross-functional teams?

Security Engineers often collaborate closely with developers, IT operations, and compliance teams to ensure that security best practices are integrated throughout the organization. One common challenge is bridging the knowledge gap between security requirements and business objectives, as other teams may not always understand the implications of security vulnerabilities. Security Engineers must balance advocating for robust security measures while supporting the team's need for agility and innovation. Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset are essential for addressing these challenges and fostering a security-focused culture across departments.

What is the difference between Security Engineering vs Security Analyst?

AspectSecurity EngineeringSecurity Analyst
Required CredentialsCertifications like CISSP, CEH, Security+; Bachelor's in CS or related fieldCertifications like Security+, GIAC, CISSP; Bachelor's in CS, IT, or related field
Work EnvironmentDesigning and implementing security systems, working with development teamsMonitoring security alerts, analyzing threats, responding to incidents
Employer & Industry UsageTech companies, cybersecurity firms, large enterprisesAny organization with IT infrastructure, government, finance, healthcare

Security Engineering focuses on designing, building, and maintaining security systems, while Security Analysts monitor and respond to security threats. Both roles require similar certifications and often work within the same industries, but their core responsibilities differ: one creates security solutions, the other manages security operations.

What is security engineering?

Security engineering is a field focused on designing, implementing, and maintaining systems and processes that protect computer systems, networks, and data from unauthorized access, attacks, and other security threats. Security engineers analyze potential vulnerabilities, develop security protocols, and respond to incidents to ensure the safety and integrity of digital assets. They work with a range of technologies, including firewalls, intrusion detection systems, encryption, and access controls, often collaborating with IT and development teams to integrate security best practices throughout an organization’s infrastructure.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a security engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Security Engineer, you need expertise in network security, threat analysis, vulnerability assessment, and typically a degree in computer science or a related field. Familiarity with security tools like SIEM platforms, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and certifications such as CISSP or CEH are commonly required. Strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and effective communication help you anticipate risks and work collaboratively to safeguard systems. These skills are crucial for protecting organizational assets, mitigating cyber threats, and ensuring regulatory compliance.
Infographic showing various Security Engineering job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 83% Full Time, 13% Part Time, 2% Temporary, and 2% Contract. Highlights an 92% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 5% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $150,773 per year, or $72.5 per hour.

Staff+ Security Engineer, Risk Engineering

Anthropic

San Francisco, CA • On-site

Full-time

Re-posted 3 days ago


Job description

About the role

The Security Risk team is responsible for how Anthropic identifies, prioritizes, and drives treatment of its most important security risks. We are rebuilding risk management to operate as an engineering function through automation and AI-native platforms to enable decision making. The systems we assess span Anthropic's full security landscape, from authorization primitives to cryptographic foundations, so the team needs breadth across domains and the ability to go deep in any of them. Security Risk, in deep partnership with Security Engineering, will help define the security program to shape how both engineers and non-engineers build and ship software.

The conventional GRC playbook was not built for a company shipping frontier AI. You will help define what replaces it, with a direct line to CISO-level decisions and the mandate to build the AI-native platform underneath. You'll work across a breadth of areas from identity and secrets management to infrastructure security, with your focus shaped by your strengths, ability to learn quickly, and the team's priorities. This is largely greenfield work, and you will help define the architecture and discipline.

Key responsibilities
  • Take ownership of Anthropic's most complex security risk problems and drive them end to end with minimal oversight, turning ambiguous signals into a defensible view of severity and likelihood and seeing them through escalation, treatment decisions, and remediation
  • Build the systems that make risk measurable and let risk work scale, including quantification tooling, automated intake and triage, and the observability that partner teams use to understand their own risk posture
  • Work alongside Security Engineering as a calibrated technical peer who pressure tests architectures and treatment plans, translates findings into prioritized remediation roadmaps, and makes the investment case for what to fix now, what to accept and track, and what to defer
  • Mentor engineers and risk practitioners across Security and the broader engineering organization, and help build a risk engineering culture in which teams own their risks and our team provides the visibility and judgment that supports the
  • Security risk engineering
    • Work across the breadth of Anthropic's security landscape, spanning areas like identity and secrets management, developer security and supply chain, infrastructure security, and secure frameworks, and build the context needed to reason about risk credibly in each
    • Go deep where a risk demands it, understanding how these systems are built and how they fail so that assessments and treatment plans reflect engineering reality rather than abstraction
  • Risk assessment and quantification
    • Identify systematic risks through threat modeling and structured assessment, then drive the severity calibration and escalation conversations that follow, bringing leadership a defensible position and a clear recommendation that holds up under pointed questions
    • Contribute to the team's quantitative risk work, applying methods such as calibrated estimation and Monte Carlo simulation where they meaningfully change a resource or treatment decision
  • Risk platform and automation
    • Design and build AI-native risk tooling that uses Claude to classify incoming risks, augment triage, and continuously sense changes in our risk landscape as teams ship
    • Create the dashboards and data pipelines that give engineering and product teams real-time visibility into their risk posture and make distributed ownership of risk practical
  • Remediation strategy and investment
    • Partner with Security Engineering and risk owners to design remediation roadmaps that are explicit about sequencing, ownership, and the investment required
    • Measure outcomes rather than activity, focusing on decisions made and risk reduced
Minimum qualifications
  • At least 8 years of software engineering or security engineering experience, including leading and remediating complex security risks independently
  • Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience
  • Strong programming skills in Python or at least one systems language such as Go, Rust, or C/C++
  • Broad knowledge across the core security engineering domains, with depth in at least one, including identity and secrets management, developer security and supply chain, infrastructure and cloud security, and secure frameworks
  • Calibrated risk judgment, meaning you can put a defensible severity and likelihood on an ambiguous problem and change your position when the evidence changes
  • Experience leading cross-functional security initiatives and navigating complex organizational dynamics
  • Outstanding communication skills, translating technical concepts effectively across all levels of the organization
  • A track record of bringing clarity and ownership to ambiguous technical problems and driving them to resolution
  • Low ego and high empathy, with a history of growing the engineers around you and supporting diverse, inclusive teams
  • Passion for AI safety and the role security and risk management play in building trustworthy AI systems
Preferred qualifications
  • Owned a named security risk and driven it from discovery through remediation across multiple teams
  • Briefed executives on risk decisions and defended accept, remediate, or transfer recommendations under challenge
  • Built security automation, detection, or risk platforms adopted across an engineering organization
  • Shipped LLM or agent-powered tooling and workflows that automate security or risk activities
  • A security engineering, detection engineering, or offensive security background with a risk-based prioritization mindset
  • Built or operated a quantified security risk program (FAIR-style decomposition, Monte Carlo simulation, loss exceedance analysis) whose outputs changed real resource decisions
  • Enough familiarity with SOC 2, ISO 27001, or FedRAMP to know what compliance does and does not buy you