---
title: 'Product Security Engineer at BackOps-AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/product-security-engineer-backops-ai-san-francisco-5f1syczeyyn6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Product Security Engineer at BackOps-AI

- **Company:** BackOps-AI
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-01
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/backops-ai/am9icG9zdDqxeGTOoeEQU4_VtXxwop5c

## Job description

## About BackOps

BackOps AI transforms supply-chain operations with agentic AI that automates complex workflows, freeing teams to focus on what matters most. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, we foster a culture of innovation, ownership, and measurable impact.

## The Role

Our agents take real actions inside our customers' live operations. They read from and write to the systems a supply-chain team runs its business on. That makes authorization, tenant isolation, and the blast radius of a single agent action product design questions, and it puts product security on the critical path of every enterprise deal we close.

We are looking for the engineer who owns that. This is a hands-on role and the first dedicated product security hire, so you will build the product security practice and do the work at the same time.

You will work closely with engineering and infrastructure on how our systems get built and run, and with product on what gets built next. You will read the code, write the fix, and ship guardrails that engineers keep switched on because they are fast and mostly right.

## Your Impact

In this role, you will own the security of the BackOps product end to end, and set the bar for how secure software gets built here while the company triples in size.

- Own product security end to end: authentication, authorization, multi-tenant isolation, APIs, and the data model behind them.
- Threat model the agent platform. Define what an agent is allowed to do in a customer's systems, prove the boundary holds, and design what happens when an agent is asked to do something it should not.
- Build the secure development lifecycle: design review, code review standards, and scanning in CI with a triage path engineers actually use.
- Run application vulnerability management end to end. Find it, prioritize it by real exploitability rather than by scanner severity, get it fixed, verify the fix.
- Set the security bar for AI-assisted code. A large share of our code is written with coding agents, and human ownership of what merges is not optional.
- Secure the software supply chain: dependencies, build pipeline, artifacts, and third-party integrations.
- Own the engineering side of enterprise security reviews, penetration tests, and coordinated vulnerability disclosure, so customer scrutiny stops being a fire drill.
- Extend the same controls to customer-hosted and on-prem deployments, where they have to hold up without our infrastructure around them.

## What We're Looking For

- 5+ years in product or application security engineering, or a software engineer who moved into security and stayed hands-on.
- Strong coding skills in Python, Go, TypeScript, or similar. You review real code and write the fix yourself.
- Real depth in authentication, authorization, and multi-tenant isolation: OAuth and OIDC, RBAC, token and session handling, and the access-control bugs that only show up between two features.
- Web and API security depth across the OWASP Top 10 classes: injection, SSRF, deserialization, and broken access control, and how these actually get exploited rather than how they are listed.
- Working familiarity with the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications and the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications. Excessive agency and prompt injection are live concerns in our product today.
- Threat modeling that produces engineering work with owners and dates, not a document.
- Hands-on with SAST, DAST, SCA, and secrets scanning in CI, including keeping the noise low enough that teams do not turn the checks off.
- Judgment about risk. You can say what to fix now, what to accept, and why, to an audience that will push back.
- Clear written and verbal communication with engineers, executives, and customers, including saying plainly what is still unknown.
- Comfortable defining the structure while doing the work, in a company where requirements change week to week.

## Nice to Have

- Hands-on securing LLM or agentic systems: prompt injection, insecure tool use, excessive agency and permissions, sandboxing, and handling model output as untrusted input.
- SOC 2 Type I/II, ISO 27001, or similar audits taken end to end, and compliance automation tooling such as Vanta or Drata.
- Enterprise security reviews and customer questionnaires answered from the engineering seat.
- Multi-tenant B2B SaaS, and on-prem or customer-hosted deployment.
- Running a bug bounty or coordinated disclosure program.
- Security capabilities delivered as an internal product, with real adoption numbers behind them.
- Standing up a product security function where none existed: charter, practices, and the culture around it.

What Success Looks Like

- What an agent can do inside a customer's systems is bounded by design, and we can demonstrate the boundary holds.
- Security shows up when a feature is being designed, rather than as a gate in front of the release.
- Vulnerabilities are found earlier and fixed faster, and we can show the trend.
- Enterprise security reviews stop holding up deals.
- Engineers keep the automated checks on because they are fast and usually right.
- Teams ship secure features without you in the room.

## Why BackOps

- Own product security at an AI-native company while the product is still being shaped.
- Our agents take real actions in customer operations, which makes this work matter more here than it does in most places.
- Small team with real autonomy and direct access to founders and customers.
- Backed by exceptional investors and advisors.

Rewards

- Competitive salary and meaningful equity.
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage.
- 401(k) plan, disability insurance, and life insurance.
- Flexible time off.
- Daily meals in the office, and regular team events and offsites.

## About BackOps-AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: BackOps builds an AI-native operating system for supply chain and logistics operations, turning complex manual workflows into structured, always-on execution across systems and teams.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Sean McCarthy (CEO) and Henry Ou (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Supply Chain & Logistics Technology / AI Operations
- **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise (automotive manufacturers, global retailers, grocery chains, machinery suppliers, and other logistics-heavy industries)
- **Mission statement**: To build the AI-native operating layer for modern operations, turning complex, manual workflows into structured, always-on execution across systems and teams.

## Products & Services
- **AI Process Center**: Captures institutional knowledge by recording how employees complete logistics workflows, identifies inefficiencies, and converts those processes into automated actions. Includes a Workflow Recorder and historical ticket mining.
- **Relay**: An agentic automation engine that runs continuously across communication channels (email, Slack, portals, etc.) to detect issues and resolve them automatically. Capabilities include order management, claims & disputes, shipping & logistics tracking, accounts payable, data & document processing, and customer support triage.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $34M raised
- **Last Round**: $26M Series A (led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Gradient, Construct Capital, and 10VC) — raised in April 2026
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Theory Ventures, Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund), Construct Capital, 10VC
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Raised $26M Series A just 6 months ago (as of Sept 2026)
  - Customers report 93% faster response times and 100% automatic filing of eligible carrier claims
  - Clients include one of the world's largest automobile manufacturers, a major global retailer, leading grocery chains, and major U.S. machinery suppliers
  - Headcount of 25 employees, actively scaling team

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-native architecture**: Not a chatbot bolted onto existing workflows, but a purpose-built "operations OS" that learns processes from SOPs and executes across fragmented systems (web portals, carrier APIs, ERPs, email, Slack)
- **Forward-deployed team model**: Works alongside customer operations from day one, mapping processes and tuning decision logic — a hands-on approach that reduces implementation friction
- **Founding team depth**: CEO Sean McCarthy was an early hire at Amazon Shipping (global sales); CTO Henry Ou led applied ML teams at Apple and ByteDance and ran an ERP integration business — a rare blend of operational and technical expertise
- **Full lineage capture**: All decisions and exceptions are logged with complete context, creating a living system of record for how teams actually work

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the team and accelerating product roadmap to meet growing demand for AI-driven logistics automation
- Expanding the platform's ability to handle more complex, multi-departmental workflows (CS, Ops, Finance, Sales)
- Deepening integrations with legacy systems, carrier portals, and enterprise tools

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Emphasizes a "human + machine" philosophy — building tools that augment operators, not replace them. Described as a place for "operators, engineers, or builders who believe that the future of work is human + machine and not human versus machine."
- **Remote/Hybrid**: Based in San Francisco with two offices; specific remote policy not detailed publicly, but likely hybrid given the forward-deployed team model.
- **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work on a category-defining product in a space ripe for transformation. Small, nimble team (~25 employees) means high impact and ownership. Backed by top-tier investors with deep AI and logistics expertise.
- **Engineering culture**: CTO with strong ML background from Apple and ByteDance suggests a high bar for technical excellence. Work involves cutting-edge AI applied to real-world operational problems.

## Sources
1. [backops.ai](https://www.backops.ai/) — Official product and company description
2. [backops.ai/careers](https://www.backops.ai/careers) — Careers page and mission
3. [backops.ai/about-us](https://www.backops.ai/about-us) — Founding story and team
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/backops-ai) — Company profile with headcount and founding year
5. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/backops-ai) — Funding data, news, and Expert Collections

## Other roles at BackOps-AI

- [Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-backops-ai-san-francisco-1m1bz26j9x55) — San Francisco, CA
- [Engineering Manager, Infrastructure and Security](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-infrastructure-and-security-backops-ai-san-francisco-e4cky54xn1np) — San Francisco, CA
- [Engineering Manager, Core Product Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-core-product-engineering-backops-ai-san-francisco-h95knyk3tvwm) — San Francisco, CA
- [Technical Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-backops-ai-san-francisco-5t082nnrpj11) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding GTM Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-gtm-recruiter-backops-ai-san-francisco-trwn25fwpbnn) — San Francisco, CA
- [Enterprise Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-backops-ai-los-angeles-6x74mdhyy05s) — Los Angeles, CA
- [Enterprise Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-backops-ai-chicago-vkd5te1sf1mq) — Chicago, IL
- [Enterprise Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-backops-ai-new-york-4z4fkmv7pbqj) — New York, NY
- [Founding Finance & Accounting Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-finance-accounting-lead-backops-ai-san-francisco-byv3mcb1cq7t) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-technical-recruiter-backops-ai-san-francisco-dxm77c6jpmhx) — San Francisco, CA