Staff Security Engineer
Company websitebeyondfinance.com (Beyond Finance, opens in new tab)
Base salary $160K to $195K
Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in Chicago, IL
You apply on the employer's own site. Six Figure Work does not handle applications.
- LocationChicago, IL
- WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
- Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
- Last checked (2 h ago) · observed since
About this job
At Beyond Finance, we've made it our mission to help everyday Americans escape the endless cycle of crippling debt and step into a brighter financial future. Through compassionate, individualized care, a culture focused on compliance and ethics, supportive user-centric technology, and customized financial solutions, we've helped over 1 million clients on their path to a brighter future.
While we're proud of what we've already accomplished, we're searching for new collaborators to help us get to the next level! If you're looking to join a forward-thinking, rapidly growing organization with helping people as its number one goal, we want to hear from you.
Role Overview
As a Staff Security Engineer, you'll get involved early with Product and Software Engineering teams to embed security into our architecture and processes as they design, build, and ship. You'll also be someone the Security team can pull into any project, at any phase and regardless of domain, to make sure it lands on the right security outcome.
This is a hands-on role, and you don't need to be an expert in all three areas: application security, cloud security, and security automation and tooling. You should have strong, demonstrated depth in one of the three, along with enough working knowledge of the other two to contribute without hand-holding and to be a trusted voice on technical decisions outside the systems you personally own.
What You'll Do
- Partner with Engineering, DevOps, and Product across projects, providing security input at any phase of design or build, regardless of domain.
- Guide secure design and code review for web and mobile applications, and help manage core AppSec tooling (SAST, SCA, secret scanning, DAST, ASM, and mobile security tooling).
- Help triage and remediate application-level vulnerabilities with engineering teams.
- Contribute to cloud security posture across the AWS environment, including IAM, network segmentation, container security, secrets, and data exposure, using CNAPP and AWS-native tooling.
- Support cloud and application vulnerability management, and help tune WAF rules as needed.
- Build automation and internal tooling, primarily in Python, that reduces manual work for the security team.
- Contribute to security log pipelines, SIEM detections, and endpoint security controls.
- Help embed security checks, such as scanning and secrets detection, into CI/CD pipelines in partnership with DevOps.
- Contribute to secure development and infrastructure standards, playbooks, and enablement materials used across engineering.
What We're Looking For
Requirements
- 8+ years of hands-on security engineering experience.
- Strong, demonstrated depth in one of the following, with working knowledge of the other two: application security, cloud security, or security automation and tooling.
- Working knowledge of threat modeling.
- Operates independently and drives projects without day-to-day oversight.
Nice to Have
- Deeper expertise across more than one of the following: application security (SAST/DAST/ASM tooling, secure SDLC), cloud security (AWS IAM, networking, container orchestration, CNAPP-driven posture management), or security automation (Python tooling, log pipelines, SIEM detection engineering).
- Hands-on Infrastructure as Code experience, ideally Terraform.
- Red teaming or offensive security experience.
- PCI-regulated or financial services environment experience.
- Mobile application security experience.
- AI/ML security exposure: prompt injection, data poisoning, model abuse, and the controls that mitigate them.
- Identity security across human and non-human identities.
- Development experience with Ruby on Rails, Python, Go, or similar languages.
The Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate measures success by reduced risk, not tickets closed. They understand how an attacker would approach a system and use that understanding to favor secure design and simple guardrails over adding more scanners or approval gates. They treat application code, cloud infrastructure, identity, and the pipeline as one connected system rather than separate problems.
This person is proactive. Given an ambiguous problem, they identify the highest-impact piece and start working on it rather than waiting for a fully scoped ticket, and they'd rather deliver a partial fix now and improve it over time than spend months on the perfect design. When a fix is needed in a system they don't own, they make the change themselves, get it reviewed, and ship it rather than filing a ticket and waiting on someone else.
Engineers trust this person's judgment. They catch a bad design, a fragile system, or an overlooked risk before it ships, and they flag potential blockers early enough to design around them instead of working around them later.
Why Join Us
- High-ownership role with room to influence architecture, tooling, and process beyond your own domain.
- Work spans application security, cloud security, and security automation rather than being boxed into one lane.
- Modern engineering environment with strong leadership support for security.
- Competitive compensation, benefits, and growth opportunities.
The base annual salary range is listed below. This role is eligible for additional incentives, including an annual bonus.
Base Salary Range
$160,000—$195,000 USD
Why Join Us?
While you make a difference for others, we’ll work to make a difference for you, providing an uplifting, collaborative work environment and benefits that reflect your value to us. For eligible full-time employees, we offer:
- Considerable employer contributions for health, dental, and vision programs
- Generous PTO, paid holidays, and paid parental leave
- 401(k) matching program
- Merit advancement opportunities
- Career development & training
And finally, our team spirit and culture! We cultivate an environment of community, connection, and belonging across our entire organization.
Beyond Finance does not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third-party recruiting agencies in response to job positions. No fee will be paid to their parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to Beyond Finance employees or the Beyond Finance HR team. No placement fee will be paid to any third party unless such a request has been made by the Beyond HR team.
Source: Beyond Finance on Greenhouse · View original posting (opens in new tab)
Pay in context
This role's base floor ($160,000) is above 69% of the 55 IT & Security roles in Illinois listed on this site; 1 other lists the same floor. Their median floor is $132,100; the middle half runs from $108,069 to $163,625.
Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 7, 2026.
This listingStaff Security Engineer$160K to $195K
Software Engineering Manager$170K to $210K
Security Engineering Manager$170K to $200K
Director of Strategy & Analytics$146,810 to $203,084
Senior Technical Product Manager$135K to $160K
Manager, Strategy & Analytics$118,830 to $162,636
Manager of Marketing Analytics$113,000 to $164,887
Chart as a table
| Role | Published base |
|---|---|
| Staff Security Engineer (this listing) | $160K - $195K |
| Software Engineering Manager | $170K - $210K |
| Security Engineering Manager | $170K - $200K |
| Director of Strategy & Analytics | $146,810 - $203,084 |
| Senior Technical Product Manager | $135K - $160K |
| Manager, Strategy & Analytics | $118,830 - $162,636 |
| Manager of Marketing Analytics | $113,000 - $164,887 |
Observed changes
- First observed on the employer's board
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- Stopped meeting the published-salary criteria
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- Observed since
- Employer-stated posting date
- 2026-08-06
Where this pay comes from
Location as the employer wrote it: Chicago, Illinois, United States
$160,000—$195,000 USD
- Method
- Employer text, read with fixed rules and re-verified
- Checked
- Rule set
- us-base-v2
The pay passage appears in the employer's own job text. Fixed, deterministic rules located it, and the passage below was checked against the stored copy of the posting.
What we verified
- The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
- The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
- The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.
We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.
