Engineering
/Senior leadership
Principal Security Engineer
Application & Platform Security
Compensation
INR 45 - 75 LPA + equity.
Engagement
Full-Time
Permanent role. Full-time commitment. Remote-first, with periodic in-person off-sites.
Scope of role
Set direction within your domain. Build and mentor a team. Own outcomes at the function level.
01 — The role
Why this role exists at EduRankAI
Own EduRankAI's security posture: application security, infra security, data privacy (DPDPA 2023 + GDPR). You will lead a small security team and you will be the engineer accountable when something goes wrong. This role exists because AI companies face a more interesting threat surface than most: prompt injection, training-data exfil, model jailbreaks, plus the usual application security. You will own the whole picture, and you will write enough code to defend the design choices you make.
02 — The work
What you will own
- 01 Own the threat model and the security architecture document.
- 02 Lead incident response — commander, on the page, in the postmortem.
- 03 Run the secure-SDLC programme (code review, scanning, audits, training).
- 04 Own GDPR + DPDPA 2023 technical compliance — the actual controls, not the policy PDFs.
- 05 Run the bug bounty and responsible disclosure programme.
- 06 Commission quarterly third-party penetration tests; own the remediation.
03 — The expertise
What we look for
04 — The bar
Who thrives here
- → You have led security for an org of at least 50 engineers for 2+ years.
- → You have personally led the response to a Sev-1 security incident and written the postmortem.
- → You can describe two security controls you killed because they were theatre, and what you replaced them with.
- → You can read application code and find a real bug in it.
- → You have written or significantly contributed to a security policy that engineers actually read.
05 — How we work
The EduRankAI environment
Remote-first, async-first
Work from anywhere. We optimise for deep work, not face time. Periodic in-person off-sites for the full-time team.
High autonomy, high standards
We hire adults and trust them. You will be expected to set your own goals, communicate clearly, and ship.
Builders, not bureaucrats
We optimise for clarity over process. Make the call, ship the work, write up what you learned.
Bharat-built, globally ambitious
We are an Indian frontier AI lab. We build for India first and the world second — in that order.
06 — Hiring process
What to expect after you apply
- 01
Application review
Every application is read personally within five business days. We respond either way.
- 02
Take-home or live exercise
Role-specific. Time-boxed. Real problems we are actually working on, not invented puzzles.
- 03
Conversations
Deep technical and values conversations with the team you would join. No trick questions. No panel ambushes.
- 04
Offer or honest no
If yes: digital offer letter, signed in-portal, transparent terms. If no: written feedback if you want it.
Before you start
What we will collect. What it costs. What we will not do with it.
Application fee
CHF 100
Lead tier
We will collect
- Name, email, phone — Account + application updates. No marketing.
- Resume / portfolio link — Human review of your work.
- Date + place of birth — Identity verification only.
- Your written responses — Selection rubric. Read by humans.
- Government ID (later) — Anti-fraud at offer / interview stage. Not at signup.
We will never
- Sell your data
- Share with third-party recruiters
- Use for advertising
- Train models on it
- Send marketing email
Our situation
EduRankAI is a small, independent organization building long-term capabilities in educational intelligence, advanced AI systems, and research infrastructure. We take no advertiser money, no donations with strings attached, and no investor pressure on hiring decisions. The small per-application fee covers the real cost of processing your application — human review, identity verification, infrastructure, reviewer time. It buys us the right to be honest. Genuine financial hardship? Request a fee waiver inside the application — reviewed individually within 5 business days, with no record in your file and no second-class treatment of waiver-granted applications.
Ready to apply?
We read every application personally. If you are the right person for this role — regardless of pedigree, background, or where you are based — you will hear back from us within five business days.
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