---
title: 'Founding Security Engineer at Valkai'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-security-engineer-valkai-hvfvjvs5qhax'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-06'
---

# Founding Security Engineer at Valkai

- **Company:** Valkai
- **Compensation:** $200k–$350k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-12
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/valkai/594d91a5-a789-4620-8981-5301475ffcfe

## Job description

## THE ROLE

You'll build the security foundations that allow our AI systems to operate safely in demanding enterprise environments. You'll own security across our product, cloud infrastructure, and internal systems, writing code, shipping controls, and working directly with engineers to identify and fix vulnerabilities. You'll also own customer trust: explaining our architecture and controls to enterprise security teams, leading security reviews, and turning customer requirements into practical improvements. You'll work directly with company leadership and partner with Engineering, Product, AI Research, Sales, and Legal to set priorities and build the security function as Valkai grows.

## WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

- Security engineers who ship: You have built and operated production software or security tooling. You can investigate an issue, write the fix, and own it through deployment.
- Product and cloud security depth: You understand application vulnerabilities, cloud architecture, identity and access, secrets management, data flows, and tenant isolation.
- Customer credibility: You can explain technical security decisions clearly to enterprise customers, work through diligence questions, and distinguish implemented controls from future commitments.
- Practical judgment: You prioritize risks based on impact and exploitability, make clear tradeoffs, and help engineers build securely while keeping product development moving.
- Clear collaboration: You work well across technical and business teams, document decisions, and follow through on remediation.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Guide Valkai's security roadmap. Assess our product, infrastructure, and internal systems, prioritize the highest-impact risks, and own remediation.
- Build and strengthen authentication, authorization, tenant isolation, secrets management, encryption, and data-handling controls. Contribute production code and infrastructure changes alongside Engineering.
- Secure AI agents and their integrations, including tool permissions, execution boundaries, access to customer data, and defenses against prompt injection and data exfiltration. Partner with AI Research and Product to test failure modes and implement safeguards.
- Establish security logging, actionable detections, incident response procedures, and vulnerability management. Investigate issues, coordinate response, and implement fixes that prevent recurrence.
- Own enterprise security reviews, technical diligence calls, questionnaires, and customer audit support. Partner with Sales and Legal to make accurate security commitments and resolve deployment blockers.
- Build and maintain our Trust Center, architecture overviews, security documentation, and reusable customer responses. Automate evidence collection and review workflows.
- Drive security readiness for SOC 2 and ISO 27001, coordinating evidence, remediation, and external auditors or specialists as needed. Partner with Product, AI Research, and Legal on AI governance and ISO 42001 readiness as enterprise requirements evolve.
- Select security tools and external partners, track improvements, and help define future security hires as the function grows.

## NICE TO HAVE

- You have been an early security hire at an enterprise software or AI company.
- You have hands-on experience securing AI agents, sandboxed execution, enterprise integrations, or multi-tenant systems.
- You have found and remediated vulnerabilities through penetration testing, bug bounty work, or security research.
- You have supported SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audits, built compliance automation, or worked on AI governance and ISO 42001.
- You have worked with life sciences organizations, financial institutions, law firms, or other highly regulated enterprise customers.

## BENEFITS

- Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity.
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents.
- Generous PTO policy.
- Paid parental leave.

At Valkai, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

## About Valkai

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Valkai provides an AI operating system for life sciences, using agent systems to accelerate drug discovery, clinical trials, and regulatory workflows across pharma, biotech, and medical device companies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: New York City, NY, USA
- **Founded**: 2024 ([builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/valkai))
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence / Life sciences software
- **Target customers**: B2B – large pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and medical device organizations
- **Mission**: “Bringing life back to life sciences” – enabling experts to spend less time on coordination and more time advancing science ([valkai.com](https://www.valkai.com/))

## Products & Services
- **Agent Systems for Life Sciences**: A platform that connects internal data, industry sources, and AI agents into a single coordinated layer to remove blockers in the pipeline. Covers quality management (ISO 13485, FDA 21 CFR Part 820), regulatory pathway guidance, sales intelligence, and workflow automation. ([valkai.com](https://www.valkai.com/), [getvalkai.com](http://www.getvalkai.com/))
- **Custom Software Solutions**: Modular, customizable tools that integrate into company-specific workflows. ([getvalkai.com](http://www.getvalkai.com/))
- **Enterprise Security & Compliance**: Isolated data storage, client data not used for training, third-party auditing, and GxP compliance. ([valkai.com](https://www.valkai.com/), [getvalkai.com](http://www.getvalkai.com/))

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Over 20,000 users across top pharma companies (per [valkai.com](https://www.valkai.com/))
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly available
- **Growth Signals**: Founded in 2024, already trusted by “leading life science organizations” including a top 5 medical device company and a leading biotech; aggressively hiring for multiple roles (AI Strategy, Talent, Product Designer).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Deep domain expertise**: Built by a team with decades of experience across life sciences, regulation, and AI innovation. ([valkai.com](https://www.valkai.com/))
- **Enterprise-grade security**: Designed by security experts with over a decade of experience in regulated environments; meets highest standards for data privacy and compliance.
- **Full pipeline coverage**: Integrates quality, regulatory, sales, and research workflows in a single platform, differentiating from point solutions.

## Strategic Focus
- Accelerate adoption of agent systems within major life sciences organizations.
- Expand platform capabilities and modular tools to cover more workflow pain points.
- Grow the team across engineering, product, and customer-facing roles.

## Why Work Here
- **Work model**: Hybrid / In-office (New York City). The company describes a “Hybrid Workspace” where employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work. ([builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/valkai))
- **Culture**: Small, agile team (currently 1 employee listed, likely growing fast) working on a mission-driven problem – making medicine more abundant.
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on AI innovation, security, and direct collaboration with life sciences experts. The team includes veterans from “the world’s premier AI labs and life sciences companies.” ([valkai.com](https://www.valkai.com/))

## Sources
1. [valkai.com](https://www.valkai.com/) – Company overview, products, security, mission, and team.
2. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/valkai) – Year founded, location, work model, employee count, and job listings.
3. [builtin.com/jobs](https://builtin.com/company/valkai/jobs) – Job description details and company tags.
4. [getvalkai.com](http://www.getvalkai.com/) – Product features, enterprise security, and industry use cases.
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/valkai](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/valkai) – Careers page listing open roles.

## Other roles at Valkai

- [Member of Technical Staff](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-valkai-new-york-nqept2z8cm5n) — New York, NY
- [AI Strategy, Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-strategy-lead-valkai-new-york-3vhya83rk07z) — New York, NY
- [Chief of Staff, AI Strategy](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-of-staff-ai-strategy-valkai-new-york-z1sbq81hbq2y) — New York, NY
- [Member of Technical Staff - Research](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-research-valkai-san-francisco-sbmjvdz5tc6t) — San Francisco, CA
- [Head of Security & Trust](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-security-trust-valkai-nk7s1rzvgfbx)
- [Product Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/product-marketing-manager-valkai-new-york-9z1pv8ax1wrt) — New York, NY
- [Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-valkai-new-york-qd1bp6a5w9az) — New York, NY
- [Member of Technical Staff - Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-platform-valkai-san-francisco-45a7z2tcx6ts) — San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff - AI](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-ai-valkai-new-york-hh672hb0eva9) — New York, NY
- [Member of Technical Staff - Product Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-product-engineering-valkai-new-york-0mrvfp3q1ant) — New York, NY