Security Engineer / Security Architect
Make Sphere approvable in the highest-trust environments: hardening, customer diligence, and the path from pilot to production.
About this role
Security is not a layer we add later. It is part of the product and part of the sale. Sphere runs in customer-controlled, on-prem, and air-gapped environments where security review is the gate to production. You will help us deploy credibly in those environments: hardening deployment patterns, supporting customer diligence, and moving Sphere from “interesting pilot” to “approved for production.” We are starting this as a contract / fractional engagement, with room to grow as regulated deployments become constant.
What you'll own
- Security architecture for customer-hosted, on-prem, and air-gapped deployments
- Hardening guidance across IAM, networking, secrets, logging, and deployment controls
- Support for customer security reviews and technical diligence
- Security documentation and practical audit-readiness materials
- Secure deployment baselines, in partnership with platform engineering
What you'll do
- Assess Sphere's current deployment security posture and find the biggest gaps
- Define secure deployment patterns for regulated and high-trust environments
- Support responses to customer security questionnaires and technical reviews
- Improve security documentation, diagrams, and internal practices
- Help the team avoid both under-building and over-engineering
What we're looking for
- Hands-on cloud security, deployment security, or security architecture experience
- Track record supporting customer security reviews or procurement diligence
- Familiarity with regulated or high-trust environments
- Strong practical judgment about risk, tradeoffs, and priorities
- Clear communication with engineers, founders, and customer security teams
Strong pluses
- ITAR, CUI, FedRAMP, IL4 / IL5, GovCloud, or adjacent environments
- Customer-hosted or air-gapped deployment models
- AI/ML system security, model containment, or prompt/data protection
- Startup experience where security had to be built pragmatically
Your first 90 days
- Identify the top security blockers to customer deployment and procurement
- Produce a prioritized hardening roadmap
- Improve readiness for customer technical and security review
- Help define Sphere's secure deployment baseline
Compensation
$100 - $225 per hour, depending on experience and scope. Contract to full-time conversion possible, with equity.
Benefits
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Flexible paid time off
- Company-provided equipment
As an early-stage company, we're committed to building a benefits package that grows with us.
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.
Sphere is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Sphere is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.