---
title: 'Lead Security Engineer at Buffer'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-security-engineer-buffer-remote-q76ehft1xzje'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-06'
---

# Lead Security Engineer at Buffer

- **Company:** Buffer
- **Location:** Remote
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-10-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/buffer/9eed68be-5967-43e6-bb17-3dad6d966747

## Job description

## About Buffer

We create social media and brand-building software for small businesses, creators, and individuals. Our mission is to provide essential tools to help small businesses get off the ground and grow. Through exceptional customer service and uplifting content, we help our customers believe they can succeed and do good along the way. Buffer is a fully distributed team, and we’ve always aimed to do things a little differently. Since the early days, we’ve focused on building one of the most unique and fulfilling workplaces by rethinking a lot of traditional practices. We also default to transparency, so you can read all about our metrics, and our successes and failures along the way on our [Transparency Dashboard](https://buffer.com/open). We're united by Buffer's [values](https://buffer.com/about#values), and we hire and work from all over the world. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment, and we are building a culture where underrepresented groups are welcome and can flourish. Please note that we do travel to work together in person once or twice per year, and those events are highly encouraged to build deeper connections among our small team. As you get to know Buffer and consider joining the journey, you can learn more about Buffer on our [Journey](https://buffer.com/journey) page. Still curious to learn more about the experience on the Buffer team? Feel free to read more from [Kirsti](https://buffer.com/resources/first-30-days-buffer/) and [Sabreen](https://buffer.com/resources/joined-3-days-before-the-retreat/) as they share their first experiences with Buffer, as well as from [Hailley](https://buffer.com/resources/8-years-at-buffer/), who captured why she still calls Buffer home after 8+ years.

While unusual at Buffer, we're looking for folks in a specific timezone range. This role is currently open to candidates based between UTC-3 and UTC+3. That gives you overlap with our current security engineer in Sri Lanka and most of our Engineering team, and lets the two of you share incident coverage so neither of you has to work through the night.

## About the role

We're hiring a hands-on security engineer to be the tech lead for Buffer's Security team. You'll work alongside [Adnan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adnanissadeen/), who has carried security at Buffer for years. Together, you’ll own security and compliance for a 15-year-old profitable company that is rebuilding itself around AI. Two things make this the right moment. Buffer’s product surface is growing: in May, we launched a public GraphQL API with an MCP server and CLI. More than 35,000 organizations have connected an AI tool to Buffer, and we are planning to build a plugin ecosystem on top. Internally, we're becoming an AI-native organization: MCPs on our Claude Team plan, custom connectors, internal tools, and Roo, our own internal agent. We're small and lean, with few processes, and we run on trust around access and permissions. We don't want to lose that, but the surface now grows faster than one person can cover. That means the usual security playbook won't work here. We don't buy enterprise plans for every tool, and we don't make people justify every access request. You’ll make the secure path the easy path to follow. Your role will be to set the direction for security at Buffer and to do much of the work yourself. You'll decide which open security problems to address first, write code to fix some of them, and lead incidents when they happen. We're looking for an enabler and a team player, not a gatekeeper. This is a generalist role by design.

Who you’ll work with You’ll report to [Miguel,](https://www.linkedin.com/in/migueldavid/) Engineering Manager for the Infrastructure and Security teams. Day-to-day, the Security team is you, Adnan, and Miguel. Adnan knows how everything at Buffer fits together and where the sharp edges are. Together, you’ll own planned security work as well as the work that keeps the lights on: the security inbox, requests from other teams, maintenance, and chores. You’ll lead the team’s direction and standards. You will also work closely with product engineering teams to ensure that what we build meets a strong security bar. That means collaborating on tech spec reviews and growing the group of security champions across the teams. Your peers from our Advocacy (customer support) and People teams will rely on you to support them with security and compliance needs that come up in their work, from customer security questions to vendor reviews and policy.

## What you’ll be working on

- 🧭 Lead security at Buffer. Define the strategy and roadmap, set priorities, drive execution, and change how we work where it matters. If you see a problem outside your lane, say so and drive the fix.
- 🧰 Build. Identify the problem, define the solution, then build it with Adnan: tooling, automation, processes.
- 🔁 Put security in the development loop. Check on every PR, threat modeling in tech specs, dependency, secrets, and supply chain hygiene, and review steps that hold up as more of our code is written with AI agents.
- 🔐 Advance operational security. Secure our day-to-day operations to meet industry-wide standards while maintaining the flexibility afforded by Buffer’s high-trust environment.
- 💡 Keep the lights on. Security inbox, requests from other teams, maintenance and chores, shared with Adnan. Much of this is manual today, and we’d love you to automate what you can.
- 🚨 Lead incidents and take part in our engineering-wide on-call rotation. Set the standard for how we run a security incident, then hold the team to it. Run tabletops with the rest of Engineering, and ensure the gaps are fixed.
- 🤖 Secure the AI surface. Threat-model what we’re building, from agents with tool access to connectors and in-product AI, and set guardrails so Buffer can move fast on AI without guessing.
- 🐛 Run vulnerability disclosure. Triage reports from outside researchers, fix or route the real ones, and decide how the program grows.
- 🤝 Own compliance and customer trust. SOC 2 and Meta platform compliance are the big ones today. We want them to make Buffer safer, not only to pass audits, but also to automate evidence where you can. Security questionnaires reach us through Advocacy. Help answer them, and build what lets customers find answers on their own (a Trust Center, for example).

Helpful skills and experience

- You’ve been the senior security person somewhere without a CISO above you. You know what it means to set direction without a mandate and earn it through work.
- You have hands-on application and API security depth in a multi-tenant SaaS, ideally one with a public API: authorization models, OAuth and OIDC, session and auth flows, IDOR and SSRF, and threat modeling. You've found these bugs and fixed them, not only reported them.
- You write code. You can read and change a TypeScript codebase well enough to ship a fix and review someone else’s (legacy PHP and Python show up more rarely, too).
- You’ve led security incidents end-to-end, including the writing of status updates, customer comms, and postmortems that people act on.
- You’ve worked with AWS, Kubernetes, and Cloudflare, or similar, enough to reason about infrastructure risk with an infrastructure team. You don’t need to run it.
- You’ve run a SOC 2 or similar program, or worked closely with one, and you’d rather automate evidence collection than do it by hand.
- You've run or triaged a vulnerability disclosure or bug bounty program, and you can tell a real report from noise quickly.
- You have strong opinions, and you can hold them loosely. You are comfortable disagreeing with a senior engineer’s design, and working together to find the best solution (sometimes changing your mind when their argument is better).
- You’re fluent with modern AI tools, and you use them to multiply your output and your team’s. You’ve thought hard about securing systems that use them.
- You thrive in remote, async environments, and you follow through. You're clear in your thinking and generous with context, and you close the loop on what you commit to. Most of your influence here will be written.
- Bonus points if you’re already a Buffer user or familiar with social media management tools.

Our tech stack

- Product. Node.js (TypeScript) across most services in a monorepo, backed by MongoDB; a REST API and PHP being retired for legacy services. iOS and Android apps. A public GraphQL API, MCP server, CLI, and connectors.
- Infrastructure. AWS (EKS, IAM, SQS, S3, CloudFront), Terraform, ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, Cloudflare (WAF, Zero Trust, Workers, DNS).
- Security and compliance. Vanta for SOC 2, Dependabot, gitleaks, AWS GuardDuty, Cloudflare WAF and Zero Trust, Action1 for device management, 1Password, and Google Workspace as the identity layer.
- Observability and incidents. Datadog, Sentry, [incident.io](http://incident.io), and PagerDuty.
- AI. Claude Team across the company, internal agents and MCP servers built in-house, in-product AI features.

Apply for the job Do you believe you're a fit for this role and want to join the Buffer team? We'd love to hear about you! Here's what our hiring process looks like:

- Application. A short form with your CV, LinkedIn, a few yes/no questions, and an example of your writing.
- Questionnaire. If there’s a match, we’ll email you a short set of questions to learn a bit more about you!
- Interview process: Meet with several teammates across a few Zoom calls, starting with [Miguel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/migueldavid/), Engineering Manager for Infrastructure and Security, and the hiring manager for this role, and then a handful of other Buffer teammates and peers.
- Take-home exercise. During our interview process, we'll ask you to do an asynchronous task so we can see your work in practice and discuss it live.
- Meet the CEO. Get to know [Joel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelgascoigne/), our Founder CEO.
- Collaboration period. Two paid days working with the team on a real project, so that we can each see what it's like to work together.

Privacy Policy By submitting the application, you consent to Buffer collecting and processing your personal data for recruiting purposes. Find more details in our [Privacy Policy](https://buffer.notion.site/Privacy-Policy-for-Applicants-230a7f5a00fd80e48478f09171d18a24?pvs=143).

## About Buffer

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Buffer provides a suite of social media marketing tools for scheduling, publishing, engagement, and analytics, designed to help small businesses, creators, and individuals grow their organic reach.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (fully remote team)
- **Founded**: 2010
- **Founders**: Joel Gascoigne (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Social Media Marketing / SaaS
- **Target customers**: Small businesses, creators, and individuals (B2B and B2C)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To help small businesses get off the ground and grow via organic marketing.

## Products & Services
- **Buffer Publish**: A social media scheduling and publishing tool that allows users to plan, collaborate, and post content across multiple social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, etc.).
- **Buffer Engage**: A tool for managing social media engagement, including comments and messages, from a single inbox.
- **Buffer Analyze**: An analytics tool providing insights into social media performance, audience growth, and content effectiveness.
- **Buffer Start Page**: A tool to build a simple, customizable micro-site (link-in-bio) to showcase content and drive traffic.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (bootstrapped, private company)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of **$25.6M** (as of mid-2025) [buffer.com](https://buffer.com/journey)
- **Total Customers**: 78,190+ paying customers [buffer.com](https://buffer.com/journey)
- **Monthly Active Users (MAU)**: 235,085+ [buffer.com](https://buffer.com/about)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Bootstrapped; no external venture capital funding. The company participated in the Startup Sprint project and later an accelerator in 2011, but has been self-sustaining since.
- **Growth Signals**: Steady ARR growth (from $25.5M to $25.6M in recent months), a fully remote global team of 73 teammates across 15 countries, and a consistent focus on product expansion (e.g., AI tools stipend for employees, new features for engagement and analytics).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Radical Transparency**: Buffer publicly shares its finances, team salaries, revenue, and key metrics (ARR, customer count, MAU) via an open dashboard. This builds trust and attracts talent who value openness.
- **Bootstrapped & Profitable**: The company has never taken VC funding, allowing it to prioritize long-term product health, customer happiness, and team well-being over growth-at-all-costs metrics.
- **4-Day Workweek**: A standard 32-hour, four-day workweek (with a flexible, meeting-free fifth day) is a core part of the company’s culture, boosting productivity and work-life balance.
- **Fully Remote & Global**: A distributed team across 15+ countries, with a strong remote-first culture and infrastructure built over a decade.
- **Strong Brand & Trust**: Known for its radical transparency and customer-centric approach, Buffer has a loyal user base and a strong reputation in the social media management space.

## Strategic Focus
- **Product Expansion**: Continuing to evolve from a pure scheduling tool into a comprehensive social media marketing platform (publish, engage, analyze, start page).
- **AI Integration**: Actively investing in AI tools to enhance product features and internal productivity (e.g., AI tools stipend for employees).
- **Organic Growth**: Focused on serving small businesses and creators with organic marketing tools, rather than competing in the paid ads space.
- **Sustainable Growth**: Prioritizing steady, profitable growth over rapid scaling, with a focus on customer happiness and long-term product health.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture of Transparency**: Salaries, revenue, and strategic decisions are shared openly with the entire team and the public. This fosters a high-trust environment.
- **4-Day Workweek**: A core benefit that allows for deep focus and better work-life balance.
- **Fully Remote**: Work from anywhere in the world; the team is spread across 22 countries and 51 cities.
- **Generous Benefits**: Includes a $1,000 home office setup stipend, 16 weeks of fully paid family leave, a growth mindset fund for learning, profit sharing, a 3% savings plan match, flexible time off, sabbaticals (6 weeks after 5 years), and an AI tools stipend.
- **Competitive & Transparent Pay**: Salaries are calculated using a public formula based on role, experience, and cost of living, with a commitment to paying above market.
- **Engineering Culture**: Focus on continuous improvement, no-ego collaboration, and a strong emphasis on work-life balance. The team is small (73 people), offering high impact and ownership.
- **Values-Driven**: Core values include "Default to Transparency," "Choose Optimism," "Show Gratitude," "Be a No-Ego Doer," "Improve Consistently," and "Reflect to Unblock."

## Sources
1. [buffer.com - About Us](https://buffer.com/about)
2. [buffer.com - Join the Buffer Journey (Careers)](https://buffer.com/journey)
3. [buffer.com - Transparent Salaries](https://buffer.com/salaries)
4. [buffer.com - Working at Buffer](https://buffer.com/resources/working-at-buffer/)
5. [buffer.com - Buffer Values](https://buffer.com/resources/buffer-values/)

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