IT Security Engineer - Alpaca

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. As a licensed financial services company, Alpaca serves hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with institutional-grade APIs, supporting over 10 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team of 400+ members is diverse, experienced, and distributed across the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond. We are deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community. Alpaca is backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

We value curiosity, empathy, and accountability, and are looking for passionate individuals to contribute to our rapid growth.

The Role: IT Security Engineer

We are seeking an IT Security Engineer to own the security standards and controls that protect Alpaca’s workforce identities, endpoints, and critical business systems. This role's scope includes identity and access management, single sign-on, privileged access, multi-factor authentication, endpoint security, secure network access, and email security.

You will maintain these standards, measure control effectiveness, and partner with the IT team for device management and day-to-day administration. This position reports to the Enterprise Security Architect and involves close collaboration with IT, DevOps, Engineering, GRC, and the wider Security team.

The Security Team is 100% distributed and remote.

What You'll Do

The core responsibilities of the IT Security Engineer are focused on identity security, endpoint security, email and domain protection, and measurable control enforcement.

Identity and Access Security

• IAM and SSO Standards: Define and maintain security standards for SSO and conditional access across cloud, SaaS, and internal systems.
• Multi-Factor Authentication: Own and enforce multi-factor authentication standards, including phishing-resistant methods.
• Privileged Access: Maintain privileged-access standards, approval policies, and periodic access reviews with system owners.
• Joiner, Mover, Leaver: Partner with IT and People teams to ensure timely, complete, and auditable access changes.

Endpoint, Email, and Domain Security

• EDR Policy: Own endpoint detection and response policy and tuning, with IT handling deployment.
• Device Posture: Maintain device-posture and secure network access requirements for access to business applications.
• Control Measurement: Measure identity and endpoint controls and follow up where they are not met.
• Detection Partnership: Work with Security Operations on identity, endpoint, and email detections and response playbooks.
• Admin Access: Maintain security baselines for administrator access to critical SaaS platforms and vendor accounts.
• Vendor Security Events: Assess the identity and account impact when a SaaS provider or vendor reports a security event.
• Email Security: Own email authentication standards and email security configuration.
• Domain Protection: Maintain security standards for company domains and for monitoring lookalike domains.
• Phishing Response: Triage reported phishing and coordinate takedowns.

Incident Response and Collaboration

• Incident Support: Lead the identity, endpoint, and email aspects of security incidents, including account containment.
• On-Call: Participate in the Security Operations on-call rotation after onboarding and cross-training.
• Enablement: Provide clear guidance to IT and employees on security requirements to ensure control adoption without hindering business operations.

What You'll Bring (Must-Haves)

• Excitement about Alpaca’s mission and what we’re building.
• 3+ years of experience in IT security, identity security, or security engineering roles.
• Hands-on experience with an identity provider and SSO, including SAML and OIDC.
• Experience enforcing phishing-resistant MFA, such as FIDO2 or hardware security keys.
• Hands-on experience with an endpoint detection and response platform.
• Scripting or automation experience (Python, Bash, or PowerShell).
• Experience with zero-trust network access or device-posture controls.
• Working knowledge of email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and phishing response.
• Experience working closely with IT teams and translating security requirements into operational workflows.
• Experience investigating identity, endpoint, or email security alerts.
• Willingness to participate in an on-call rotation.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially during incidents.
• Comfortable working cross-functionally and handling escalations calmly and decisively.

Bonus Points (Nice-to-Haves)

• Experience securing financial, trading, or other highly regulated platforms.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001.
• Experience with just-in-time privileged access tools.
• Experience securing administrator access to SaaS platforms.
• Experience with password managers and secrets management at company scale.
• Experience with MDM platforms for macOS and Windows.
• Experience with cloud IAM in AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Ability to balance security rigor with operational efficiency and business needs.

Benefits

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card

Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.