Manager - Security Architecture

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, builds Gigawatt-scale AI Factories for Training and Inference. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give every person access to artificial intelligence. One person, one GPU.

If you'd like to build the world's best deep learning cloud, join us.

• Note: This position requires presence in our San Francisco, San Jose, or Seattle office location 4 days per week; Lambda's designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.

About the Role

Lambda Security protects some of the world's most valuable digital assets: invaluable training data, model weights representing immense computational investments, and the sensitive inputs required to leverage best of breed AI models. We're responsible for securing every byte that powers breakthrough artificial intelligence.

Reporting to the Senior Manager of Security, your team serves dual functions: building security for the business and demonstrating that work directly to customers. As security advisors to Product Engineering, Platform Engineering, and IT teams, your team will establish security policies and architecture standards, conduct threat modeling and design reviews for critical systems, and create implementation guidance that engineering teams can adopt. In support of our customers, your team will develop customer-facing security documentation and participate directly in enterprise security discussions. This work ensures the right security decisions get made across Lambda's AI infrastructure while protecting customer data, enabling hypergrowth velocity, and building the trust that closes enterprise deals.

As Manager of the Security Architecture team, you'll build and lead a team of 4-5 security engineers with expertise across application security, infrastructure security, and corporate security. You'll hire strong specialists, coach them through complex security problems, set team priorities and architectural direction, and create a culture where security judgment accelerates business velocity rather than creating friction.

Your success is measured by the security decisions your team enables across the business: engineering teams building secure-by-default systems, compliance frameworks mapped to technical controls, and customers trusting Lambda's infrastructure with their most valuable AI workloads. Your team will balance proactive architecture work (defining what "good" looks like) with reactive consultation (reviewing designs and answering complex security questions).

Your immediate focus will be building your team, establishing processes for design reviews and architecture guidance that scale with Lambda's growth, and developing a 6-12 month roadmap aligned with Lambda's 2026 security strategic plan including compliance initiatives like ISO 27001.

We're looking for engineering managers who pair strong people leadership with enough security depth to coach specialists, set architectural direction, and translate security decisions into business value. If you're energized by building high-performing teams, enabling security at scale through excellent judgment rather than brute force, and helping enterprise customers trust their most valuable AI workloads to Lambda's infrastructure, we'd love to talk.

We value diverse backgrounds, experiences, and skills, and we are excited to hear from candidates who can bring unique perspectives to our team. If you do not exactly meet this description but believe you may be a good fit, please still apply and help us understand your readiness for this role. Your application is not a waste of our time.

What You'll Do

Team Leadership & Development

• Build, hire, and develop a high-performing team of 4-5 security engineers with deep expertise across application security, infrastructure security, and corporate security.
• Foster a culture where security judgment accelerates business velocity, creating an environment where specialists thrive through clear expectations, regular coaching, and opportunities for growth.
• Conduct regular one-on-ones and provide constructive feedback that helps your engineers advance their technical depth and expand their cross-functional impact.
• Set team priorities and architectural direction, ensuring your team focuses on the highest-impact security decisions across Lambda's AI infrastructure.

Strategic Architecture & Program Management

• Own your team's 6-12 month roadmap, balancing proactive architecture work (defining security standards and patterns) with reactive consultation (design reviews and complex security questions).
• Establish security policies and architecture standards that enable Product Engineering, Platform Engineering, and IT teams to build secure-by-default systems.
• Define measurable success criteria for your team's work, translating security architecture decisions into business impact that stakeholders understand.
• Proactively guide the evolution of Lambda's security architecture program as the company matures, ensuring architecture decisions align with compliance commitments and evolving customer security requirements.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Customer Enablement

• Partner deeply with Product Engineering, Platform Engineering, and IT teams to integrate security architecture guidance at optimal moments in their development cycles.
• Conduct and oversee threat modeling and design reviews for critical systems, ensuring your team provides actionable recommendations that balance security rigor with development velocity.
• Enable your team to create implementation guidance and architecture patterns that engineering teams voluntarily adopt because they make secure development easier.
• Support enterprise sales by developing customer-facing security documentation and coaching your team through direct security discussions with prospective customers evaluating Lambda's infrastructure.
• Collaborate with peer security teams (Detection & Response, Platform, Program Coordination) to ensure cohesive security architecture across all security functions.

What We Think a Candidate Needs to Demonstrate to Succeed

• 5+ years of security engineering or security architecture experience with 3+ years leading technical teams, demonstrating ability to build and develop high-performing security specialists.
• Proven track record building team cultures where specialists thrive through clear expectations, effective coaching, and career development that expands both technical depth and cross-functional impact.
• Strong technical background in security architecture, threat modeling, and secure design principles with enough depth to guide team decisions, evaluate complex tradeoffs, and coach engineers through difficult security problems.
• Experience working across application security, infrastructure security, or corporate security domains, with demonstrated ability to set architectural direction and security standards that engineering teams adopt.
• Excellent collaboration skills working with highly technical engineering teams both with and without authority, building relationships that enable security architecture guidance at optimal moments in development cycles.
• Skilled communicator who translates security architecture decisions into business value, helping stakeholders understand how technical security work protects customer data and enables business velocity.
• Ability to thrive in high-speed, high-ambiguity startup environments where you balance building team capability and security architecture foundations while executing at a fast pace.

Nice to Have

• Prior experience in AI/ML infrastructure companies or cloud service providers where you've navigated the unique security challenges of multi-tenant systems and customer data isolation at scale.
• Hands-on experience driving compliance audits (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, or FedRAMP) including evidence collection, control mapping, and managing auditor relationships.
• Deep familiarity with bare metal infrastructure security in addition to cloud platforms, understanding physical security considerations and hardware-level security controls.
• Experience creating security architecture patterns that were adopted widely across multiple teams or organizations, demonstrating ability to build reusable solutions that scale beyond a single use case.
• Experience managing security engineers through significant career transitions, such as promoting ICs to lead roles or helping specialists successfully pivot between security domains.
• Enthusiasm about leveraging Lambda's access to state-of-the-art LLMs to pioneer AI-powered security architecture capabilities—imagine automated threat modeling, intelligent design review assistance, and architecture validation at scale only possible when you host the AI infrastructure yourself.

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Lambda

• Founded in 2012, ~400 employees and growing fast
• We offer generous cash & equity compensation
• Our investors include Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, US Innovative Technology, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, Crescent Cove.
• We are experiencing extremely high demand for our systems, with quarter over quarter, year over year profitability
• Our research papers have been accepted into top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG
• Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents
• Wellness and Commuter stipends for select roles
• 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)
• Flexible Paid Time Off Plan that we all actually use

A Final Note:

You do not need to match all of the listed expectations to apply for this position. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.

Compensation Range: $297K - $495K