Security Engineer II, CLS Application Security

As a Security Engineer II on Amazon’s CLS Application Security team, you will help move security earlier in the development lifecycle and reduce vulnerabilities before they reach production. The role focuses on building security automation and AI-powered tooling, leading strategic initiatives end to end, and partnering closely with development teams to deliver secure-by-default outcomes.

Location: Irvine, CA (onsite)
Compensation: USD 159,300 to 202,400 per year
Minimum experience: 3 years

What you’ll do

• Lead a strategic security initiative end to end, including scoping, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance, while guiding other engineers.
• Build security automation and AI-powered tooling that prevents vulnerabilities at scale through prevention rules, secure defaults, and paved paths that stop issues before production.
• Review application architecture and designs, run security design reviews, and steer builders toward secure-by-default solutions.
• Consult directly with development teams to resolve findings and provide fast, actionable guidance that meets or exceeds the security bar.
• Identify opportunities to centralize controls so teams can adopt one solution instead of building their own, reusing what already exists where possible.
• Investigate ambiguous, high-impact risks, detect patterns across a large application footprint, and fix root causes using reproducible mechanisms that are simple, maintainable, and built for the long term.
• Communicate risk and recommendations clearly to engineers, partner security teams, and business stakeholders, and advocate for the right outcome even when it is not the popular one.
• Coach and mentor teammates to raise how the team works and the value it delivers.

Key skills and qualifications

• 2+ years of scripting, programming, and security code review in a common programming language (non-internship experience).
• Knowledge of system security vulnerabilities and remediation techniques, including penetration testing and developing exploits or equivalent experience.
• Experience owning and leading significant projects from concept through deployment.
• Experience communicating security risk to technical and non-technical stakeholders in writing.
• 3+ years of application security engineering experience, such as security design reviews, threat modeling, and code-level vulnerability analysis.
• Experience carrying a builder-facing security consult load, including intake, triage, guidance, and resolution tracking.

Technologies: AWS (IAM, VPC, KMS, CloudTrail), CI/CD pipelines.

Benefits

• Sign-on payments
• Restricted stock units (RSUs)
• Health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage)
• 401(k) matching
• Paid time off
• Parental leave

Training, work-life balance, and culture

• Work-life balance: flexible work hours and arrangements are part of the culture.
• Training & career growth: endless knowledge-sharing, training, and other career-advancing resources.
• Inclusive team culture: ongoing DEI events and learning experiences, with a focus on seeking out and celebrating diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in a logistics/operations environment
• Experience in root cause analysis and error correction, identifying changes to procedures and systems to implement long-term fixes and avoid repeating issues
• Experience mentoring, leading, or managing more junior engineers
• Experience with cloud security in AWS (IAM, VPC, KMS, CloudTrail, or equivalent services)
• Experience building automated security controls or shifting security left in CI/CD pipelines

Los Angeles County applicants

• Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies.
• Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position.
• Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.