---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer at Obsidian Security'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-obsidian-security-philadelphia-pennsylvania-6njd18yg6m4h'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Staff Software Engineer at Obsidian Security

- **Company:** Obsidian Security
- **Location:** Philadelphia Pennsylvania, United States
- **Compensation:** $223k–$239k
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-07-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/obsidiansecurity/jobs/5374810008

## Job description

Obsidian Security is the leading SaaS security platform, trusted by global enterprises like Snowflake, T-Mobile, and Algolia. We protect 200+ organizations across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, including many of the world’s largest Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies.

Founded in 2017 and backed by top investors like Greylock, Obsidian was built to close a critical gap: securing SaaS apps where business happens—Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and hundreds more. The company does this by offering a complete SaaS security platform to reduce risk, detect and respond to threats, and prevent breaches at the source. Obsidian was built by leaders who redefined endpoint and identity security at CrowdStrike, Okta, Cylance, and Carbon Black. Now, they’re transforming how SaaS is secured.

With AI driving rapid SaaS growth and complexity, agentic AI tools gain privileged access to sensitive data through integrations, creating new risks most security tools miss. Obsidian uniquely detects anomalous OAuth token activity and manages integration risks. Major announcements are on the horizon. Recognizing that SaaS security needs to evolve, Obsidian enables growing organizations to start with a lightweight, prevention-focused browser extension and expand coverage over time.

With global momentum, a growing partner ecosystem including SentinelOne, Databricks, and Google Cloud, and a major fundraise ahead, Obsidian is scaling rapidly toward long-term growth and IPO readiness.

About the Role - as a Staff Software Engineer at Obsidian, you'll:

Own meaningful product and platform work across Obsidian's engineering stack, with scope that extends beyond a single team. This is a generalist role for someone who can move between backend services, data flows, APIs, product features, integrations, and production systems without getting stuck at the boundaries between them, and who can set technical direction that other engineers and teams align to.

You'll work on systems that help customers understand activity, risk, and threats across their SaaS environments. Some problems will be well-defined. Others will start as a customer need, a security signal, or a vague product idea that needs technical shape. You should be comfortable turning that ambiguity into an architecture, a multi-team plan, and working software — and comfortable being the person others look to when the technical path forward is unclear.

## What you'll do

- Own features and system architecture from problem definition through production, at a scope spanning multiple teams or the broader platform
- Design and build backend services, APIs, data processing workflows, integrations, and product-facing capabilities
- Set technical direction and architectural standards that other engineers and teams build against
- Work with product managers, designers, security researchers, and engineers to turn customer needs into shipped software
- Improve the performance, reliability, scalability, and observability of existing systems, and identify systemic risks before they become incidents
- Make practical technical decisions with organization-wide impact and explain the tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Raise engineering standards through code reviews, design discussions, mentoring senior and mid-level engineers, and documentation
- Debug the hardest production issues and drive teams to durable fixes, not just short-term patches
- Use AI-powered tools effectively while maintaining high standards for correctness, security, and maintainability

## What's in It for You

- Direct, high-leverage impact on a core security product used by enterprises worldwide
- Variety across backend engineering, data pipelines, SaaS integrations, detection systems, cloud infrastructure, and customer-facing workflows
- A chance to define the technical approach to current security problems around SaaS, identity, data movement, and AI usage
- Strong peers across product, engineering, security research, and go-to-market teams
- A fast-moving environment where staff/principal engineers are expected to own ambiguous problems, influence direction across teams, and ship

Required Skills & Experience

- 8+ years of experience in a software engineering role, with a track record of increasing technical scope and impact
- Strong proficiency in one or more modern programming languages such as Python, Go, TypeScript, or SQL
- Demonstrated experience designing and building backend services, APIs, distributed systems, data processing workflows, or production product features at scale
- Deep understanding of relational databases such as Postgres, including performance and scaling tradeoffs
- Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP, including cost, reliability, and architecture tradeoffs
- Familiarity with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes
- Experience with event-driven or streaming systems such as Kafka, Redis, or similar technologies
- Strong ability to reason about system design, performance, reliability, security, and operational tradeoffs across multiple systems and teams
- Experience setting technical direction and leading complex, cross-team technical initiatives without needing formal authority
- Strong communication skills in code reviews, design discussions, and cross-functional planning, including with senior stakeholders

Desirable Experience

- Experience with observability and monitoring tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, or similar platforms
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and deployment tooling such as GitLab CI/CD
- Deep exposure to large-scale distributed systems, high-throughput ingestion, or data pipeline architecture
- Background or interest in security, SaaS platforms, identity, threat detection, or data protection
- Experience working across multiple engineering teams or across geographically distributed teams
- Experience mentoring engineers, including senior engineers, and helping teams improve technical practices
- Experience evaluating AI-generated code and using AI tools as part of an engineering workflow

AI Skills & AI-Native Engineering Expectations

As an AI-forward engineering organization, we expect staff/principal engineers to effectively leverage AI tools and understand foundational AI concepts to improve development efficiency, build AI-ready systems, and set the standard for how their teams use AI tools responsibly.

AI Engineering Capabilities

- Leverage AI tools effectively to improve development efficiency and build AI-ready systems
- Critically evaluate, test, and refine AI-generated outputs before they reach production
- Understand core AI/ML concepts such as LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, inference, and evaluation
- Experience integrating AI/ML APIs or building systems that support AI-driven product workflows
- Ensure quality, observability, reliability, security, and performance in systems that use or support AI capabilities
- Help establish org-wide norms and best practices for AI-assisted engineering

Employee Benefits

Our competitive benefits packages are designed to support our employees' well-being, both at work and at home.  Our US based employees enjoy:

- Competitive compensation with equity and 401k
- Comprehensive healthcare with dental and vision coverage
- Flexible paid time off and paid holiday time off
- 12 weeks of new parent or family leave
- Personal and professional development resources

For more details on our US benefits, or for information on our international benefits, please see [here](https://app.rippling.com/benefits/preview/76xr7qaxl1xvkd3z).

Pay Transparancy

Please note that the base pay range is a guideline and for candidates who receive an offer, the base pay will vary based on factors such as work location, as well as the knowledge, skills and experience of the candidate. In addition to a competitive base salary, this position is eligible for equity awards and may be eligible for sales commission or incentive compensation based on the role or function within the company.

At Obsidian, we are proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. We value diversity and hire for talent, passion, and compassion. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to submit satisfactory proof of identity and legal authorization.  If you have a need that requires accommodation, please contact accommodations@obsidiansecurity.com

Information collected and processed as part of any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Obsidian’s [Applicant Privacy Policy](https://www.obsidiansecurity.com/privacy-policy/).

Base Salary Range $223,000—$239,000 USD

## About Obsidian Security

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Obsidian Security provides an end-to-end AI and SaaS security platform that gives enterprises continuous visibility, runtime guardrails, and audit-ready evidence across human, agentic, and non-human activity.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Glenn Chisholm (Co-Founder & CTO) and other co-founders including Brian Murphy (Co-Founder & Chief AI Officer)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Cybersecurity (SaaS Security Posture Management, AI Security Posture Management, Identity Threat Detection and Response)
- **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise – Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies (e.g., Snowflake, T-Mobile, Pure Storage) across financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, and entertainment.
- **Mission statement**: “Be the trust layer for enterprise AI adoption – enabling every organization to embrace the power of SaaS and AI without fear, confusion, or compromise.”

## Products & Services
- **SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)**: Unified visibility into misconfigurations, access drift, and compliance gaps across third-party enterprise applications (Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft 365, ServiceNow, etc.).
- **AI Security Posture Management (AISPM)**: Full visibility into every AI agent and GenAI application in the environment, including access, behavior, and data exposure.
- **Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)**: Runtime detection of threats across humans, connected apps, and AI agents, with response capabilities to prevent incidents.
- **SaaS Supply Chain Resilience**: Reduces risky integrations, detects third-party threats early, and contains blast radius from vendor breaches.
- **Self-learning AI + Knowledge Graph**: Real-time, normalized mapping of every identity, access event, activity, and risk across the entire SaaS and AI estate.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – **$90M (Series B)** raised from top investors.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**:
  - Investors: Greylock Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, IVP, GV (Google Ventures), Menlo Ventures, SYN Ventures, Wing Venture Capital.
  - Board members include Venky Ganesan (Menlo Ventures), Asheem Chandna (Greylock), Gaurav Garg (Wing Venture Capital).
  - Ecosystem partners: SentinelOne, Databricks, Google Cloud.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Protects more than **200 organizations** across North America, Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
  - Customer roster includes **2 of top 3 financial services firms**, **3 of top 5 telecom carriers**, **6 of top 10 hospitality/entertainment companies**, **7 of top 10 manufacturers**, **10 of top 12 healthcare providers**.
  - Expanded from SaaS security to AI security in 2025; strong global momentum and a new fundraise on the horizon.
  - Headcount likely growing (34 open positions as of search date).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Network Effects**: Every live customer threat and signal feeds a shared model, sharpening detections across all customers before they become incidents.
- **Knowledge Graph Technology**: Unified, normalized, real-time mapping of all identities, access events, and risks across the entire SaaS and AI estate – a data foundation competitors lack.
- **SaaS-native & AI-native**: Purpose-built for environments where data lives in third-party apps and AI agents, not behind a firewall.
- **Team Expertise**: Leadership team includes category-defining security veterans from CrowdStrike, Okta, Cylance, and Carbon Black.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling globally** with growing partner ecosystem and a major fundraise expected.
- **Deepening AI Security** as enterprises connect AI tools and agents to sensitive data.
- **Expanding coverage** across non-human identities (service accounts, API tokens, AI agents) which now outnumber human identities in enterprise application estates.
- **Continuing to build the "trust layer"** that enables safe AI adoption at scale.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as a passionate team “optimizing for impact” by solving big cybersecurity challenges. Values include customer obsession, ownership, delivery excellence, and data ethics (the “Obsidian C.O.D.E.”).
- **Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. Many roles appear location-specific (e.g., Principal Product Security Engineer, Staff Enterprise Security Engineer – Palo Alto). Expected hybrid/on-site presence.
- **Notable Benefits** (US employees):
  - Competitive compensation with equity and 401k.
  - Comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, vision).
  - 12 weeks of new parent or family leave.
  - Flexible paid time off and paid holiday time off.
  - Personal and professional development resources.
- **Growth Opportunity**: Highly funded, fast-growing cybersecurity startup backed by top-tier VCs; opportunity to shape a new category (SaaS+AI security) while working with elite enterprise customers.

## Sources
1. [Obsidian Security – Company Website](https://www.obsidiansecurity.com/)
2. [Obsidian Security – Who We Are](https://www.obsidiansecurity.com/company)
3. [Obsidian Security – Careers](https://www.obsidiansecurity.com/careers)
4. [Obsidian Security – Job Board (Greenhouse)](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/obsidiansecurity)
5. [Obsidian Security – LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/obsidiansecurity)

## Other roles at Obsidian Security

- [Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-information-security-officer-ciso-obsidian-security-palo-alto-57e8d19hwxmy) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior Threat Research Engineer – Taiwan](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-threat-research-engineer-taiwan-obsidian-security-taipei-zv5cvxn9ksb5) — Taipei, Taiwan
- [AI Security Engineer - Taiwan](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-security-engineer-taiwan-obsidian-security-taipei-wk0jm24v0d1p) — Taipei, Taiwan
- [Threat Intelligence Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/threat-intelligence-lead-obsidian-security-palo-alto-hahqcyafp45j) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior Customer Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-customer-marketing-manager-obsidian-security-united-states-kh414n3n0qfr) — United States
- [Staff IT Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-it-systems-engineer-obsidian-security-palo-alto-tff4x32ksmcn) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-support-engineer-obsidian-security-united-states-east-central-cs43h8m197jp) — United States (East/Central)
- [Head of GTM Enablement](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-gtm-enablement-obsidian-security-united-states-x5r0qpswet4m) — United States
- [Software Engineer - AI Security Product](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ai-security-product-obsidian-security-palo-alto-zxs177dcy29z) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Site Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/site-reliability-engineer-obsidian-security-palo-alto-fvbnpr0dxv8k) — Palo Alto, CA