Lead Security Eng

About Keka

• Keka HR is one of India's fastest-growing HRTech platforms, trusted by thousands of businesses
• across India, the GCC, and the United States. Built with an employee-first approach, Keka helps
• organizations manage HR, Payroll, Performance, and Employee Experience — seamlessly, at
• scale.
• As Keka scales rapidly across geographies and customer segments, security is a core engineering
• priority — not an afterthought. We are looking for a Lead Security Engineer who will define, build,
• and own Keka's security posture for the next phase of growth.

About the Role

• This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role for a security engineer who operates both as a strategic
• leader and a deeply technical individual contributor. You will lead Keka's security engineering
• function — building and mentoring a team of junior engineers while personally driving critical
• security initiatives across cloud infrastructure, product, and platform.
• The security landscape has changed fundamentally with the rise of AI. We are looking for someone
• who doesn't just understand that shift — but actively builds against it. Whether securing AI-powered
• product features, defending against AI-augmented attacks, or establishing responsible AI usage
• policies within engineering, you'll be defining the playbook.
• The ideal candidate sees security not as a gatekeeping function, but as a force multiplier for
• engineering velocity and customer trust.

Key Responsibilities

1. Security Leadership & Strategy

keka · Lead Security Engineer — Job Description

• Own end-to-end security posture across cloud infrastructure, applications, and engineering

platforms — from strategy to hands-on execution.

• Define and drive a multi-year security roadmap aligned with Keka's product and engineering

growth trajectory.

• Act as the primary security advisor to Engineering, Platform, and Product leadership;

influence architecture decisions proactively, not reactively.

• Build, mentor, and grow a team of junior and mid-level security engineers — establishing a

culture of security ownership across the entire engineering org.

• Lead threat modeling, security reviews, and risk assessments across new features and

architectural changes.

1. AI-Era Security Practices

• Establish AI security governance: define acceptable use policies for LLMs, Copilot tools, and

agentic systems within engineering workflows.

• Identify and mitigate AI-specific threat vectors — prompt injection, model inversion, training

data poisoning, and adversarial misuse of AI-powered product features.

• Build detection capabilities for AI-augmented attacks: deepfake social engineering, AIgenerated phishing, and automated vulnerability exploitation.
• Evaluate and red-team AI/ML integrations within Keka's product to uncover data leakage,

insecure inference endpoints, and supply chain risks.

• Stay current with the evolving threat landscape driven by AI — proactively update controls,

playbooks, and team readiness accordingly.

1. Cloud & Platform Security

• Strengthen and continuously improve cloud security architecture across AWS, GCP, and

Azure environments.

• Design and enforce security controls for large-scale distributed systems, multi-tenant SaaS

architecture, and high-volume databases.

• Implement and mature IAM, network segmentation, secrets management, encryption, and

zero-trust principles.

• Harden container and Kubernetes environments; ensure runtime security, image scanning,

and cluster access controls.

• Drive adoption of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) security practices with automated policy

enforcement (OPA, Sentinel, etc.).

1. Vulnerability Management & Incident Response

• Lead end-to-end vulnerability assessment and remediation across applications, APIs,

databases, and infrastructure.

• Coordinate and conduct penetration testing; partner with external vendors and drive

remediation with engineering teams.

• Build and own incident response playbooks, runbooks, and post-mortems — ensuring each

incident measurably improves the system.

• Implement and tune SIEM, logging, and alerting pipelines to reduce MTTD and MTTR across

security events.

• Conduct regular security drills, tabletop exercises, and red team scenarios to build team

• muscle memory.
• keka · Lead Security Engineer — Job Description

1. DevSecOps & Engineering Partnership

• Embed security natively into CI/CD pipelines: SAST, DAST, SCA, secrets scanning, and

container vulnerability checks as first-class gates.

• Partner with Engineering and DevOps to establish secure-by-default development practices

— not security as an afterthought.

• Build developer-facing security tooling, threat model templates, and secure coding playbooks

that scale across squads.

• Drive adoption of software supply chain security practices (SBOM, dependency auditing, build

provenance).

• Champion security as an engineering quality metric — not just a compliance checkbox.

1. Compliance & Governance

• Lead and support compliance initiatives for SOC2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, and emerging

data privacy regulations.

• Maintain audit readiness; own security documentation, control mappings, and evidence

collection.

• Support enterprise customer security questionnaires, audits, and trust assessments — acting

as a credible technical voice.

What We're Looking For

Must Have

• ✓ 10+ years in Security Engineering, Cloud Security, or Platform Security — with at least 3
• years in a senior/lead role.
• ✓ Proven experience building and mentoring security teams in startup or high-growth SaaS
• environments.
• ✓ Hands-on depth in IAM, network security, container/Kubernetes security, API security,
• database security, encryption, and secrets management.
• ✓ Strong cloud security experience across AWS, GCP, or Azure — ideally multi-cloud.
• ✓ Experience with security tooling: Nessus, Burp Suite, Qualys, Prisma Cloud, Wiz,
• CrowdStrike, or equivalents.
• ✓ Proficiency in scripting/automation: Python, Bash, or Go — for building detections,
• remediations, and security tooling.
• ✓ Ability to operate both as a strategic people leader and a deeply hands-on individual
• contributor.
• ✓ Strong incident response instincts — you've owned P0 security incidents end-to-end.
• ✓ Excellent stakeholder management and ability to translate technical risk into business impact.

Good to Have

• › Hands-on experience with AI/ML security — LLM threat modeling, agentic pipeline security, or
• adversarial ML.
• keka · Lead Security Engineer — Job Description
• › Experience in HRTech, FinTech, or enterprise SaaS with multi-tenancy and PII at scale.
• › Certifications: CISSP, CCSP, CEH, AWS Security Specialty, or Google Cloud Security.
• › Exposure to building scalable security programs from scratch in lean team environments.
• › Experience with Zero Trust architecture implementation.
• › Familiarity with SOC2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR compliance frameworks.

Why Join Keka

• Scale & Impact — Secure infrastructure powering HR for thousands of companies across India,
• GCC, and the US. Your work protects real employee data at scale.
• Build, Don't Just Run — Join early enough to shape security culture, tooling, and team from the
• ground up — not inherit a legacy compliance checklist.
• AI-Native Engineering — Keka is actively embedding AI across its product and engineering
• workflows. You'll be at the frontier of AI security — not catching up to it.
• Engineering-First Culture — Security here is treated as engineering quality — not an obstacle.
• You'll have the trust, access, and influence to get things done right.
• Ready to secure one of India's fastest-growing SaaS