Lead Security Engineer

Lead Security Engineer

Location: Oakland, CA; Salary Range: $180,240 - $216,120; Citizenship Requirement: Must be a U.S. Citizen or Green Card holder

This is a hands-on security engineering job that covers the full range of a lead security engineer role across all of MISUMI Americas. You'll be the person who does a lot of the security day-to-day work: securing our infrastructure, running access audits, setting up controls, reviewing our systems and code, and helping investigate incidents. You'll also have a real say in the policies and priorities that shape how we handle security across the company.

A good portion of your time will go to keeping our infrastructure secure. That spans both physical networking and cloud, and it means staying on top of IAM, security groups, permission policies, and application permissions so access to our systems is tight and scoped the way it should be.

Threat detection and incident response at MISUMI Americas is handled by a group across multiple departments, and you'll be part of it. When something comes up, you'll help investigate, both hands-on and by helping coordinate the response. You will also be the escalation point for routine security issues that end up being more than expected or the existing teams can handle on their own.

As Lead Security Engineer, you'll make security decisions and help us figure out which security projects matter most across MISUMI Americas' global operations. You'll be doing the audits, checks, and reviews, and you'll help shape our security policies and standards alongside security leadership.

A big and growing part of the job is how we handle AI. You'll manage the way our AI tools are set up and help determine what's safe to turn on and what needs to be disabled. You'll also work closely with Information Security to contribute and maintain evidence for J-SOX, NIST 800-171, CMMC 2, and SOC 2 across a global business.

Areas of Responsibility

Security Decisions & Prioritization

Be the hands-on security lead across IT and engineering, making everyday security calls and acting as the main point of execution for security work

Look at security risk across the environment and help decide which security projects and initiatives to tackle first across MISUMI Americas' global operations

Help write, shape, and enforce our security policies, standards, and governance alongside security leadership

Incident Response & Escalation

Serve as part of our threat detection and incident response group, a cross-departmental team, helping investigate incidents both hands-on and by coordinating the response

Act as the escalation point for the IT team, giving them direction, mitigations, or solutions when an issue is beyond the routine security task

Dig into root cause on the tougher problems and help put fixes in place so the same thing doesn't keep coming back

Infrastructure Security

Keep our infrastructure secure across both physical networking and cloud, from firewalls, segmentation, and wireless to the way our cloud accounts and workloads are set up and protected

Design and manage IAM at the infrastructure level, including roles, security groups, and permission policies, all scoped to least privilege

Review and tighten application permissions and access policies as the environment grows, and catch misconfigurations and permission drift before they turn into problems

Identity, Access & User Audits

Run user access audits and regular access reviews across our identity and application layers

Decide what user groups and roles we need to manage access to systems

Handle access as people join, move, and leave, and keep permissions in line with policy

AI Security

Manage our enterprise AI tools such as Claude, keeping configurations, roles, and access up to date

Look at new AI capabilities one at a time (Claude for Chrome, for example) and make the call on whether to turn them on and what guardrails they need

Vet new AI integrations before they go live, including running automated scans and reviewing them by hand before any new local MCP server gets approved

Turn those AI security decisions into policies and practices we can reuse

Application & Engineering Security

Review systems for security problems, including running automated scans

Check third-party and open-source components before we adopt them

Work with engineering to keep security built into how we ship software and infrastructure

Compliance & Audit Support

Pull together and maintain the evidence behind our security audits for J-SOX, NIST 800, CMMC 2.0, and SOC 2

Run recurring compliance checks and validate controls across MISUMI Americas' global footprint

Match our controls and evidence to what each audit asks for and support the audit from start to finish, focusing on evidence and remediation rather than running the audit yourself

Policy, Process & Automation

Take the security work you do by hand and turn it into documented practices, runbooks, and repeatable processes so it doesn't all live with one person

Automate access reviews, monitoring, alerting, and reporting to cut down on manual effort

Keep our security documentation and internal knowledge base current

Physical Demands

Sitting for extended periods of time working with computers, etc.

Travel Expectations

Travel 0-10%

Desired Traits, Qualifications, Education and Experience

Senior-level, proven expertise across the security domains this role touches: identity and access management, infrastructure and cloud security, governance and compliance, incident response and investigation, application and integration security, and AI/LLM security

Hands-on incident investigation experience, and the judgment to act as an escalation point on user-facing threats like phishing and spam

Strong, hands-on experience securing infrastructure across networking and cloud, including firewalls and segmentation on the network side and IAM, security groups, permission policies, and application permissions on the cloud side

Cloud security experience (AWS, Azure, or similar), and comfort designing roles and RBAC in platforms like Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, or AWS IAM

Familiarity with security monitoring and detection tools, enough to support investigations effectively

Real experience running user access audits, access reviews, and compliance checks

Experience supporting audit and compliance programs like SOC 2, NIST 800-53/800-171, CMMC 2.0, and J-SOX, including gathering evidence and validating controls

Solid application security skills: automation tooling, reading code for security issues, and secure integration practices

The confidence to make security decisions on your own and help sort out competing priorities

A working understanding of AI and LLM security, including administering AI tools, weighing new capabilities for risk, and knowing how integrations like MCP servers fit in

A habit of turning manual security work into repeatable processes and automation

Clear communication and the ability to work across a spread-out, multi-site, global organization

Bonus

Certifications like CISSP, CISM, Security+, or GIAC (GSEC, GCIH, and the like)

Firsthand experience preparing for and going through a CMMC 2.0 assessment

Experience with audit and controls at a global, Japanese-owned company (J-SOX exposure)

Scripting and automation skills, for example, Bash, Python or PowerShell