Security Engineer - Tech Lead at Luma AI – Palo Alto, California

About LumaWhen there’s a new wave of technology, you want to be at the core—that’s where you have the most impact, work on the hardest problems, and grow the most.
You can’t find this at an AI startup building on someone else’s models—only at companies building the foundation models themselves.
The models are where the real innovation is happening. As they get more powerful, they're not just improving existing software—they're replacing it entirely. Foundation model companies are now building products deeply integrated with their models that fundamentally transform how work gets done.
Luma is exactly that:

• A top-tier research team with one of the best video generation models on the market (Ray-3.14)
• An enormous compute budget that only a few companies in the world can match ($900M Series C)
• The only one at that level directly targeting the creative space
• Building products that will completely change how creative work is done

And we’re still small enough that a single great hire can reshape the company.
Where You Come InWe are looking for a senior, hands-on security leader to build the security foundations that will support Luma’s next stage of growth. Our models and products are becoming critical infrastructure for creative professionals and enterprises. As adoption scales, we are investing in modern, principled systems for identity, access control, secrets, encryption, and safe operation of autonomous AI.
This is a builder role. You will design and ship the platform security systems and operational tooling that allow us to move quickly while meeting the expectations of world-class customers—things like auth and identity infrastructure, fine-grained access scoping, break-glass escalation systems, and agent permission frameworks. You will partner deeply with infrastructure, research, and product teams to make secure design the default, not something bolted on after the fact.
What You’ll Do

• Design and mature how access to production systems is granted and governed
• Implement scalable RBAC / ABAC approaches across infrastructure and products
• Build robust secrets management and credential lifecycle practices
• Establish strong encryption and key management patterns
• Define how agents and automated systems receive authority, how it is scoped, and how it is revoked
• Create auditability and forensic visibility for user and system actions
• Lead threat modeling across infrastructure, product, and research domains
• Collaborate with engineering teams to make secure patterns easy and automatic
• Help drive readiness for enterprise security expectations and reviews
• Strengthen incident detection and response capabilities
• Raise the company’s security bar while preserving development velocity

Who You AreRequired:

• You have built and operated security foundations in real production environments
• You are excellent at writing code, reviewing infrastructure, and shipping systems
• You recognize that in AI platforms, software systems can act with real authority
• You’ve thought deeply about how services, automations, or models are scoped, constrained, and observed
• You think in terms of systems and trust boundaries
• You have high agency—you identify problems and drive them to resolution
• You can balance pragmatism with long-term rigor
• Engineers trust you and enjoy partnering with you

What Sets You Apart

• You’ve helped organizations evolve toward mature, scalable security architectures
• You have experience implementing least-privilege access and modern identity models
• You’ve built durable approaches to secrets management and credential lifecycle
• You understand the nuances of securing multi-tenant AI platforms
• You have strong opinions on how autonomous systems should be permissioned and governed
• You know how to build detection and response capabilities in high-growth environments
• You can represent the company in detailed customer and partner security discussions
• You build platforms and paved roads that engineers love to use

Why This Role ExistsAI systems are becoming actors. They retrieve data. They call tools. They take actions independently. Security is no longer just about who can log into a machine. It’s about defining how authority is granted, constrained, observed, and trusted across humans and intelligent systems.
We are building those foundations now. If you want to shape how security works at an AI-native company operating at global scale, we should talk.
CompensationThe base pay range for this role is $230,000 – $360,000 per year.