---
title: 'Senior Security Engineer, Data Security at Kikoff'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-security-engineer-data-security-kikoff-san-francisco-s22nr407yw3d'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Senior Security Engineer, Data Security at Kikoff

- **Company:** Kikoff
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $268k–$321k
- **Posted:** 2026-09-09
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/kikoff/jobs/4400727009

## Job description

Kikoff: The Fintech Powering Financial Security at Scale Kikoff is a profitable, pre-IPO fintech company on a mission to empower everyone to achieve financial security. With record revenue growth in 2025 and a unicorn valuation, we've built a suite of products that help millions of people build credit, access liquidity, and save money. We're scaling fast. Join us if you want to build something meaningful and help millions of people move forward financially.

Why Kikoff:

This is a consumer fintech startup, and you will be working with serial entrepreneurs who have built strong consumer brands and innovative products. We value extreme ownership, clear communication, a strong sense of craftsmanship, and the desire to create lasting work and work relationships. Yes, you can build an exciting business AND have real-life real-customer impact.

## About the Role

Kikoff exists to help millions of people build credit. That only works if they trust us with their financial data. This role owns the Data Security pillar at Kikoff: how data is classified, accessed, encrypted, moved, and audited across our entire stack.

You will own and dictate the data security roadmap. You define the strategy, sequence the work, and drive it to done. Your work will be felt by every engineer at Kikoff and every customer we serve, and it will shape how we handle sensitive data as we scale.

In This Role, You Will

Own the Pillar

- Own the data security roadmap end to end: classification, access controls, encryption, tokenization, and data flow security across AWS, Snowflake, and our internal pipelines.
- Set the strategy for how humans, services, and AI agents access sensitive data. You decide what good looks like and build towards it.
- Drive least-privilege access at scale, including brokered access patterns for our data warehouse and production databases rather than standing credentials.

Build & Secure

- Design and ship tokenization and field-level protection for our most sensitive data
- Build column-level and role-based access controls across Snowflake and RDS, with audit visibility into who touched what and why
- Secure data flows between cloud storage, pipelines, and application services so the secure path is the default path
- Define and enforce access controls for AI agents to guarantee least privilege permissions and proper audibility.

Prove It

- Build audit logging and data access monitoring that holds up in front of auditors and regulators, not just dashboards
- Support data mapping and privacy engineering work for new markets and regulatory regimes (GLBA, LGPD, state privacy laws)
- Partner with Legal and Compliance on data handling requirements, and translate them into infrastructure, not policy docs

Enable Engineering

- Give engineers paved roads for handling sensitive data: reusable patterns, clear guidance, fast answers
- Threat model new data flows before they ship, not after

## Qualifications

- 6+ years in security engineering with deep, hands-on data security experience: encryption, tokenization, access control design, key management
- Strong command of AWS security primitives (IAM, KMS, S3 security, VPC controls)
- Experience securing a modern data stack: Snowflake or a comparable warehouse, plus relational databases in production
- You've designed and shipped access control systems, not just configured them. Row/column-level security, ABAC/RBAC, access brokering
- Fluency in at least one language for automation (Python, Go, Ruby, or similar)
- Comfortable in a regulated environment
- Hands-on with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or Pulumi)

Bonus Points

- Experience securing data access for AI/LLM systems and agentic workloads
- Tokenization at scale in fintech or payments
- Audit logging and data access monitoring you built yourself, not bought
- Privacy engineering depth: data mapping, retention, deletion pipelines, cross-border transfer controls
- Consumer fintech or financial services background

Base Range $268,000—$321,000 USD

## Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Kikoff Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing equal employment opportunities and considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.

Please reference the following for [more information](https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/22-088_EEOC_KnowYourRights_10_20.pdf).

## About Kikoff

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Kikoff is a personal financial technology company that builds credit, manages debt, and unlocks financial opportunity for underserved consumers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Cynthia Chen (CEO & Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Consumer Fintech, Credit Building, Personal Finance
- **Target customers**: B2C – individuals seeking to build or improve credit scores, manage debt, and access affordable financial services.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: Empowering everyone to achieve financial security, no matter where they’re starting from.

## Products & Services
- **Credit Building ($5/month)**: A credit-builder loan that reports to major credit bureaus with no interest and no hidden fees.
- **Rent & Bill Reporting**: Reports on-time rent and utility payments to credit bureaus to help users build credit from everyday bills.
- **Secured Credit Card**: A card designed to help users establish or rebuild credit responsibly.
- **AI-Powered Debt Negotiation**: Complimentary service that uses AI to negotiate debt reductions for users (over $8M in debt relief since 2024).
- **Identity Theft Protection**: Monitoring and alerts for identity fraud.
- **Fynn (AI Credit Coach)**: Launched in 2026, an AI-powered coach providing personalised financial guidance.
- **Grant & Catch**: Additional products in the ecosystem (likely focused on grants and savings/catch-up features).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (unicorn status inferred from growth and investor profile).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue surpassed **$300M** in 2025, more than doubling year over year while maintaining profitability since 2023.
- **Total Raised**: $42.5M (Series C)
- **Notable Investors**: Core Innovation Capital, Coatue, Lightspeed, Portage, Notable Capital (and 12+ others)
- **Growth Signals**: Profitable since 2023; reached $300M+ revenue in <7 years; 1M+ customers; 80M+ credit points boosted; 30K+ mortgages and 433K+ auto loans opened after using Kikoff; appointed CFO John Kaelle and CLO Robert Mahnke in 2026, signalling public-market readiness.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Radically affordable pricing** ($5/month for credit building vs. industry $300+) removes barriers for low-income users.
- **AI-first approach** for debt negotiation and credit coaching creates scalable, personalised solutions.
- **Proprietary technology** builds the entire stack in-house, lowering costs and enabling faster iteration.
- **Strong unit economics** and profitability demonstrate operational discipline uncommon at this growth stage.

## Strategic Focus
- **Continued product expansion** – adding new financial tools (Grant, Catch, Fynn) to create a one-tap financial security platform.
- **Deepening leadership bench** with IPO-experienced executives to prepare for future public listing.
- **Investing in AI and automation** to replace legacy systems and deliver faster, more accessible outcomes.
- **Scaling customer impact** – targeting underserved millions through low-cost, high-access offerings.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven culture** with real impact: 1M+ customers helped, $8M in debt relief, 80M+ points boosted.
- **Financial stability** – profitable since 2023 with rapid revenue growth, reducing risk of layoffs.
- **Strong values in action**: "Company First, Ego Last", "Act Like an Owner", "Customer Obsessed", "Think in Years, Act Today", "Be Candid & Kind".
- **Comprehensive benefits**: Health benefits, flexible PTO, 401k matching, commuter benefits, fitness benefit, office lunches & dinners.
- **Hybrid/Office setting** in San Francisco (132 Hawthorne Street) – likely a collaborative in-office culture with team meals.
- **Growth trajectory** – team is "growing rapidly" (as stated on careers page), offering ample career advancement opportunities.
- **Engineering and AI focus** – investing heavily in technology, making it an exciting environment for engineers and product builders.

## Sources
1. [about.kikoff.com/careers](https://about.kikoff.com/careers)
2. [about.kikoff.com/company](https://about.kikoff.com/company)
3. [cbinsights.com/company/kikoff](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/kikoff)
4. [businesswire.com](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260421425245/en/)

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