About this Security Architect role at Goodfire
About Goodfire
Goodfire is a research company using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI systems. Our mission is to build the next generation of safe and powerful AI—not by scaling alone, but by understanding the intelligence we're building.
Scaling has proven powerful, but today's approach is fundamentally limited: we can't meaningfully understand, debug, or shape what models learn. Every engineering discipline has been gated by fundamental science and AI is at that inflection point now.
We're advancing the science of how AI systems actually work. Treating models as black boxes is an unnecessary handicap—we have access to the structures inside them, and understanding those structures lets us steer what models learn, make them safer and more useful, and extract the vast knowledge they contain. Our goal is to make AI that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software.
Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We're backed by over $200M from B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, Eric Schmidt, and others.
About the role
We're looking for a Security Architect to own IT and physical security operations at Goodfire. The stakes in AI development are extremely high, and we need to protect ourselves against sophisticated threats. In this role, you will lead our efforts to keep Goodfire secure against global risks.
This is a foundational role. Your responsibilities will include protecting our cloud infrastructure, securing company intellectual property, managing access to IT systems, and overseeing physical security for our offices. You will defend Goodfire against sophisticated actors seeking to infiltrate our systems.
This position reports directly to the CTO.
Where you'll contribute
- Infrastructure & DevOps – Protecting our cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, and production systems from attackers.
- IT Operations – Centralizing endpoint security, identity and access management, and physical devices.
- Physical Security – Leading office access controls, visitor management, and physical security measures appropriate for an AI research lab.
- Security Culture – Building a security culture which is ready to protect the organization from state level threats.
Key responsibilities
- Design and implement security controls across cloud infrastructure (research cluster, platform APIs).
- Own identity and access management, including SSO, hardware authentication, and least-privilege access policies.
- Manage endpoint security, device management, and IT systems.
- Establish and maintain security monitoring, logging, and incident response capabilities.
- Conduct security assessments and work with engineering teams to remediate vulnerabilities.
- Develop and maintain security policies, documentation, and compliance frameworks.
- Manage physical security systems including access controls and office security.
- Respond to security incidents across all domains—digital and physical.
What you'll bring
Required experience
- 7+ years of experience in security engineering.
- Strong foundation in cloud security (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
- Experience with identity management, SSO, and access control systems.
- Experience with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA) relevant to enterprise customers.
- Comfort operating as a generalist—you'd be happy jumping between configuring firewalls and setting up badge readers.
- You can deeply own the protection of our people and systems.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience at an early-stage startup or building security programs from scratch.
- Background in ML infrastructure or familiarity with ML training workflows.
- Physical security experience, including access control systems and facility security.
Our values
Goodfire is looking for individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We are building a team first and foremost.
Put mission and team first All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves.
Improve constantly We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work.
Take ownership and initiative There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self-driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we're building.
Action today We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today.
Where we work
We are hiring for this position in our San Francisco HQ. We are in person 5 days a week, with one company-wide remote week per month.
What we offer
This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
The expected salary range for this position is $250,000 - $400,000 USD
Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world-class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life's work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now.
