The RoleWe are seeking a Senior Application Security Engineer to join Savvy Wealth at our NYC headquarters as our first dedicated security hire. This is a hands-on, in-the-weeds engineering role. You will execute the security strategy set by our Director of IT & Information Security and our CTO, with day-to-day work centered on identifying vulnerabilities, remediating them, and closing the longer-term gaps that make us exposed, both in our product and in the SaaS tools our teams use every day.
Savvy is an AI-forward company. Most of our engineering is AI-assisted, and we enable people across the business, including non-technical roles, to build with AI coding tools. That enablement is a core part of how we work, and we intend to keep it. Your job is to make it safe: setting security hygiene standards in our codebases, building guardrails around AI-assisted development, and partnering closely with our internal AI team so that speed and security move together. You will make the secure path the easy path.
This role is deliberately not a compliance or GRC position. There are no audits to run, no certifications to chase, and no questionnaires to fill out. This is purely technical security work: finding and eliminating the vectors that make us vulnerable.
Responsibilities:- Own vulnerability management end to end: identify, triage, prioritize by real-world risk, and drive remediation to closure across our product, codebases, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Cloudflare)
- Build and operate our AppSec tooling pipeline: secrets scanning in CI and at the git layer, SCA/dependency scanning with triage SLAs, and SAST rollout on our most sensitive repos, tuned for signal over noise
- Set and enforce security hygiene standards within our codebases, including code review standards that explicitly account for AI-generated code (authorship transparency, mandatory human review on security-sensitive paths)
- Partner with our internal AI team to design guardrails that keep AI-assisted development, including vibe coding by non-technical builders, safe by default: sanctioned tooling, data handling boundaries, dependency vetting, and secure defaults for AI-built integrations
- Secure the SaaS stack: harden configurations, review OAuth grants and third-party integrations, reduce misconfiguration risk across platforms like Google Workspace, GitHub, Rippling, and Slack
- Help establish conditional access and identity-layer controls in partnership with IT (SSO, phishing-resistant MFA, managed-device posture)
- Define cloud and SaaS configuration baselines for the infrastructure footprint we operate
- Contribute to detection and response readiness: high-signal detections (new OAuth grants, mass code-host downloads, credential anomalies) and participate in incident response when needed
- Work cross-functionally with Engineering, IT, and the internal AI team; clearly articulate risk, remediation paths, and tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Must have:- 5+ years of hands-on security engineering experience, with significant time in application security or product security in a small security engineer organization
- Strong software engineering fundamentals; comfortable reading, writing, and remediating code, not just filing findings
- Track record of enforcing security across technical and non-technical teams without slowing anyone down. The goal isn't to restrict how people work, it's to keep us safe while they keep working the way they need to.
- Experience embedding security into existing workflows rather than bolting it on
- Deep experience with the modern AppSec toolchain: secrets scanning, SCA/dependency scanning, SAST, and CI/CD security integration (GitHub-centric)
- Practical experience securing SaaS environments: OAuth and third-party app review, configuration hardening, and least-privilege access design
- Working knowledge of cloud security across AWS and/or GCP, and edge/CDN security (Cloudflare)
- A pragmatic, risk-based mindset: you prioritize by what actually gets exploited, ship iteratively, and avoid drowning teams in noise
- Strong perspective on AI-assisted development security: you understand how AI coding tools change the shape of AppSec risk (hallucinated dependencies, leaked secrets, insecure patterns at scale) and how to build guardrails without killing velocity
- Excellent communication skills and ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment
- Strong writing skills; Savvy is a written culture
Nice to have:- Experience building security programs at an early-to-mid stage company, taking a function from reactive to systematic
- Experience with SaaS security posture management, CSPM, or identity threat detection
- Familiarity with securing LLM-based tooling, agentic workflows, or internal AI platforms
- Detection engineering experience (SIEM/MDR, high-signal alerting)
- Fintech or financial services environment experience
- Offensive security background (pentesting, bug bounty, red team) that informs how you defend
Benefits:- Competitive salary and equity package
- Unlimited PTO + paid company holidays
- Access to holistic medical, dental, and vision plans
- Company 401(k), Commuter, and HSA/FSA plans
- NYC office in the heart of Manhattan
- Lunch and snacks provided in the office
- Access to virtual mental health care (Spring Health) and health concierge (Rightway) to help you find the right care
- Access to counseling for stress management, dependent care, nutrition, fitness, legal, and financial issues (Guardian WorkLifeMatters EAP)
