---
title: 'Staff Application Security Engineer at Upside'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-application-security-engineer-upside-washington-kpc6zb7cpqbq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Staff Application Security Engineer at Upside

- **Company:** Upside
- **Location:** Washington, DC
- **Compensation:** $214k–$245k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-02
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/upside/e2d50c7e-ba58-47bd-ad31-a0e3dbf0786a/application

**Skills:** Python, AWS, Lambda, AWS Control Tower, SAST, SCA, Threat Modeling, Vulnerability Management, AI Technologies, GitHub Suite, Terraform, DynamoDB, S3, SNS, SQS, IAM, VPCs, ChatGPT, Snowflake, SQL

> The Staff Application Security Engineer leverages AI and secure code practices to identify and remediate application vulnerabilities within the AppSec team. This individual contributor role involves running security code tests, creating threat models, guiding engineering on security architecture, and training teams...

## Job description

Meet Upside: We created Upside to transform brick-and-mortar commerce. Our technology uses the sophistication of online retail—profit measurement, attribution, and incrementality—to provide users with more value on their everyday purchases and brick-and-mortar businesses with new, profitable customers. We’ve helped millions of users earn 2 to 3 times more cashback than any other product, and hundreds of thousands of brick-and-mortar businesses earn measurable profit. Billions of dollars in commerce run through the Upside platform every year, and that value goes directly back to our retailer partners, the consumers they serve, and important sustainability initiatives.

The Impact You'll Make: You'll report to the Product Security Manager and work closely with our Cloud Security and Engineering teams to scale secure software delivery across Upside. This role owns our application security program, reducing real risk across mobile, web, and cloud systems by driving remediation, building engineering guardrails, and creating security guidance that developers actually use. You'll also work both sides of AI: we use it to do security work, and we secure the AI systems Upside is shipping.

- Own Upside's application security program, the standards, the vulnerability management pipeline, and the guardrails that stop entire classes of defects from coming back
- Drive vulnerability management outcomes by triaging and tuning findings from scanning, code review, and our annual penetration test, then partnering with engineering teams to get fixes shipped and verified
- Lead application security reviews and threat models for high-impact work across mobile, web, backend, and AI systems, and document risk decisions with clear mitigation plans
- Extend the AI automation that handles our finding volume: triage, prioritization with service context, and remediation guidance engineers can act on
- Build guardrails that scale beyond our team; repository baselines, required checks in GitHub, secure-by-default patterns for AWS workloads, reusable templates, and a security champions program

What You'll Bring:

- 6+ years in application or product security, or equivalent depth in secure software engineering with meaningful application security ownership
- Strong Python code review skills. You can open a Lambda, understand what it does, and explain the defect to the engineer who wrote it
- A track record of shipping security improvements that reduced real risk, including fixes you drove to completion with teams you did not own
- Experience with threat modeling and secure design review, engaging with designs before they ship
- Practical, everyday use of AI in your security work
- Working knowledge of our stack: AWS security (Lambda, API Gateway, IAM least privilege, secrets handling) and CI/CD security in GitHub Actions

Tools We Use:

- GitHub: Actions, Advanced Security, Copilot
- Python, Terraform
- AWS: Lambda, API Gateway, IAM, DynamoDB, S3, SNS, SQS, VPCs
- Snowflake, SQL, dbt, Dagster
- Claude, Claude Code, Amazon Bedrock

Location: Remote-first and US-based: you can work from anywhere in the country. One exception — if your home is within 50 miles of our DC, NYC, Austin, or Chicago offices, we'll ask you to join your team in person on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Outside that radius you're fully remote, and still welcome in any office whenever you're nearby.

Benefits:

- Medical, dental, and vision coverage starting on Day 1
- Equity (ISOs)
- 401(k) program
- Family planning programs + paid parental leave
- Physical fitness and wellness memberships
- Emotional and mental health support programs
- Unlimited PTO + 10 paid federal holidays + our annual, week-long Winter Break
- Flexible work environment
- Lunch reimbursement for in-office employees
- Employee Resource Groups
- Learning and Development stipend
- Transparent culture
- Amazing mission!

Diversity and Inclusion: Diversity drives innovation, and our differences make us stronger. We‘re passionate about building a workplace that represents a variety of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Everyone is welcome here!

If there's anything we can do to support a disability or special need during your application or interview process, please email accommodations@upside.com. This email is for accessibility accommodations only, it should not be used to submit job applications.

Notice To Recruiters And Placement Agencies: This is an in-house search with a dedicated recruiter. Please do not submit resumes to any person or email address at Upside. Upside is not liable for, and will not pay, placement fees for candidates submitted by any party or agency other than its approved recruitment partners.

## About Upside

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Upside is a mobile app that gives consumers cash back on everyday purchases like gas, groceries, and food while helping brick-and-mortar retailers increase profit without changing their operations.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D stage)
- **Headquarters**: Washington, DC, USA
- **Founded**: 2016 (began as GetUpside in January 2016)
- **Founders**: Alex Kinnier (Co-founder & CEO), Chris Yager (Co-founder & CPO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Consumer rewards, brick-and-mortar commerce, mobile payments, sustainability
- Target customers: B2C (consumers) and B2B (retailers including gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants, and hardware stores)
- Mission or purpose statement: “We exist to advance the economic power of people living and working in the real world.”

## Products & Services
- **[Upside App]**: A mobile application that offers personalized cash back on purchases at partner retailers. Users earn money back and retailers gain incremental profit. The platform also expanded into mobile payments in 2023.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total cash back delivered to consumers – over $1B; total incremental profit delivered to retailers – $2.5B; annual commerce run rate – $6B
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly listed on the provided sources
- **Growth Signals**: Reached 35 million consumers in its marketplace (as of April 2022 timeline entry); expanded into hardware stores (2024) and mobile payments (2023); offices opened in Chicago, New York, and Austin; 1% of revenue committed to sustainability initiatives

## Competitive Advantages
- Personalization engine that drives higher consumer engagement and retailer profitability
- Strong sustainability focus (1% of revenue to environmental initiatives, 4 million metric tons of CO2 offset, food rescue)
- Large, growing network of retailers across multiple categories (gas, grocery, food, hardware)
- Radically transparent culture and values-driven operations

## Strategic Focus
- Continue expanding into new retail verticals and geographies
- Deepen mobile payment functionality to increase consumer stickiness
- Scale the platform to deliver even more economic impact for both consumers and retailers
- Maintain commitment to sustainability and community impact

## Why Work Here
- Culture of radical transparency, ownership, and data-driven decision making
- Values-driven environment with active Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): UP+PRIDE, UMOJA, Unidos, PersonalizASIAN, EmpowHER
- Hybrid/remote work options with offices in Washington DC (HQ), Chicago, New York, and Austin
- Competitive benefits: unlimited PTO, stock options, comprehensive health coverage, mental health support, family forming benefits (including Carrot Fertility), generous parental leave
- Recognized as a Great Place to Work
- Diverse team composition (62% male, 37% female, 1% non-binary; 70% White, 9% Asian, 6% Black, 6% Latin/Hispanic, 2% two or more races, plus other groups)

## Sources
1. [upside.com/about/careers](https://www.upside.com/about/careers)
2. [upside.com/about](https://www.upside.com/about)
3. [upside.com/](https://www.upside.com/)
4. [upside.com/blog/upside-isnt-just-great-for-people-and-businesses-its-a-great-place-to-work](https://www.upside.com/blog/upside-isnt-just-great-for-people-and-businesses-its-a-great-place-to-work)
5. [upside.com/about/team](https://www.upside.com/about/team)

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