Staff Security Engineer, AI Security

The Company

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy.

We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards. Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade.

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day. We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary:

As a Staff Product Security Engineer, AI Security at PayPal, you’ll help protect 439M active accounts and $1.8T in annual total payment volume by providing technical leadership across three areas: securing AI-assisted software development, protecting AI-enabled products and agentic systems, and applying AI to improve vulnerability detection and remediation. You’ll partner with Security Architecture, engineering, product, and platform teams to translate AI security requirements into scalable controls, testing, and enforcement across PayPal’s products and business units. Through hands-on technical leadership and mentorship, you’ll turn emerging risks into durable capabilities and measurable risk reduction.

Job Description:

Essential Responsibilities:

• Leverage specialized security expertise to identify and resolve complex security issues, recommending best practices and determining new approaches that have an impact on broader security operations, while aligning security strategies with business priorities
• Partner across teams and key stakeholders to drive security initiatives, leading and solutioning complex projects and programs to strengthen overall security posture.
• Apply advanced analytical skills and sound judgment to solve security challenges, considering diverse perspectives and innovative solutions. Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies, understanding their security implications to the company’s context.
• Directly contribute to improvements within the security domain and occasionally beyond, ensuring decisions lead to meaningful enhancements in security practices.
• Leverage relationships across teams, both within and outside of security, to influence initiatives and integrate feedback into security processes.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Lead the development and execution of Product Security’s technical roadmap for AI security controls and assurance, partnering with Security Architecture to translate requirements into scalable engineering capabilities.
• Design, implement, and operate controls for AI-assisted software development, including security review of AI-generated code, security context and constraints for coding agents, automated testing, and risk-based enforcement.
• Conduct and lead security reviews of AI-enabled applications and their models, agents, retrieval systems, data flows, and external tool integrations.
• Create controls for agent identity, least privilege, tool access, execution isolation, human approval, and interruption of unsafe behavior.
• Design and help implement security controls for AI models, agents, toolsets, datasets, and pipelines.
• Develop runtime monitoring, auditability, detection, containment, and incident-response requirements for AI systems, including visibility into agent actions, tool calls, and sensitive-data access.
• Build and scale AI-driven capabilities for vulnerability discovery, validation, prioritization, and remediation across teams and engineering workflows.
• Partner with AI platform and cloud engineering teams to integrate security across AI infrastructure, platforms, and workloads.
• Help establish security criteria for evaluating, onboarding, integrating, and periodically reassessing third-party models, AI services, APIs, and developer tools.
• Develop methods and metrics for evaluating AI security risk, control effectiveness, remediation performance, and adoption across teams.
• Serve as a technical escalation point for complex AI security issues and lead architectural reviews following significant incidents or control failures.
• Mentor security and engineering professionals, deliver targeted technical guidance, and help teams apply AI security controls across diverse technology stacks.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, application security, product security, or cybersecurity, including leadership of complex security initiatives spanning multiple teams or technology platforms.
• Deep knowledge of application security vulnerabilities, secure software development practices, and technical controls used to identify, prevent, and remediate software risk.
• Hands-on experience securing AI systems.
• Strong software-engineering experience building and operating production security tooling, automation, platform services, or developer-facing capabilities.
• Track record of partnering with developers to implement robust security controls.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and senior stakeholder audiences.
• Experience designing and operating security controls across cloud environments, CI/CD systems, and diverse application and infrastructure stacks.
• Experience mentoring and developing engineers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on familiarity with application security tools (SAST, DAST, SCA, WAF, Burp Suite).
• Strong programming experience in at least one language such as Ruby, Java, Python, JavaScript, or Swift.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes, Terraform, and version control systems such as Git.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud vendor (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong understanding of authentication and authorization protocols (OAuth 2.0, SAML).

What you need to know about the role

This is a hands-on individual contributor role with cross-organizational scope. You will help set technical direction, lead delivery, and mentor engineers while remaining directly involved in architecture reviews, control design, implementation, and technical problem-solving.

Meet our team

Our mission is to embed security into every phase of the product development lifecycle, recognizing that security promotes quality engineering. We strive to create a culture of security by empowering teams to take responsibility for securing their own code and environments. We do this by providing leaders and engineers with the visibility, tools, guidance, training, and support needed to create secure products and systems. We prevent, identify, and respond to critical vulnerabilities within our ecosystem, driving response to limit potential impact to the business.

Your way to impact

Your work will reduce the likelihood that AI-assisted development introduces exploitable vulnerabilities and that AI-enabled systems misuse sensitive data, tools, or business actions. You will also improve PayPal’s ability to detect, validate, and remediate software vulnerabilities at scale.

Your day-to-day

Your work will vary across hands-on engineering, technical leadership, and cross-functional program delivery. Typical activities may include:

• Reviewing an AI architecture, threat model, or agent workflow and identifying material security risks.
• Designing, prototyping, or integrating an AI security control into a product, shared platform, or engineering workflow.
• Evaluating results from AI security scanners, adversarial tests, and runtime monitoring to determine required engineering action.
• Partnering with developers and platform teams to resolve complex design or implementation issues.
• Analyzing control coverage, effectiveness, adoption, and incident findings to determine program priorities.
• Mentoring engineers and leading technical decisions that span multiple teams or organizational boundaries.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately. To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us.

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits:

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most. We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

Who We Are:

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at [email protected].

Belonging at PayPal:

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.