Lead Security Engineer

About Copia

Copia Automation builds the version control and change management platform for industrial automation. Our customers are in oil & gas, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure — environments where the code running on PLCs, SCADA systems, and HMIs has direct safety implications. We bring modern software engineering practices to operational technology teams that have been underserved by tooling for decades.

We’re a well-funded startup growing fast, with enterprise customers deploying Copia across hundreds of facilities. Our headquarters is in New York City.

The Role

We’re hiring a Lead Security Engineer to mature Copia’s security engineering program. You’ll work closely with our CISO and report into engineering leadership.

This is not a siloed role. You’ll be the person responsible for detection engineering on Monday, IAM architecture on Tuesday, compliance evidence on Wednesday, and incident response whenever it’s needed. We need someone who can context-switch across security domains and knows which problem to prioritize on any given day.

You should be comfortable building a security program, not just operating one someone else designed. If you’ve been the first or second security engineer at a startup before, you know exactly what this means.

• Detection Engineering & Incident Response: Build, tune, and maintain detection pipelines and alerting. Run incident investigations and root-cause analysis. Drive toward full visibility and monitoring coverage across cloud and endpoint assets.
• Cloud & Infrastructure Security: Secure our AWS environment — IAM policies, network segmentation, container security, secrets management. Codify security guardrails in infrastructure-as-code. Review architecture decisions with engineering for security impact.
• Enterprise Identity & Cloud Access: Architect and manage identity infrastructure across cloud and SaaS environments — IdP configuration, SSO/OIDC integration, SCIM provisioning, conditional access policies, and RBAC design. Own the full identity lifecycle from onboarding to offboarding, enforce least-privilege across AWS accounts and SaaS applications, and drive access certification and governance programs.
• Security Automation: Automate everything you can — alert triage, access provisioning, evidence collection, vulnerability management workflows. You’re one person covering a lot of ground; automation is how you scale.

7+ years of experience in security engineering, with hands-on work across multiple security domains. You’ve ideally done this at a SaaS company or cloud-native startup where you couldn’t hide behind a large team.

• Strong detection engineering skills — you’ve built and tuned SIEM rules, written detection content, and investigated real alerts, not just monitored dashboards someone else built
• Deep understanding of AWS security architecture — IAM, VPC design, multi-account strategies, and native security services
• Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code for security — codifying policies, guardrails, and configurations rather than clicking through consoles
• Experience with identity and access management architecture — IdP configuration, SSO/OIDC, RBAC design, and access lifecycle automation
• Scripting and automation chops in Python, Bash, or PowerShell for security operations, orchestration, and evidence workflows
• Clear, direct communication skills — you can explain a risk to an engineer, write a post-incident report for leadership, and answer a customer security questionnaire without corporate fluff

Why Copia

• Your work has real-world safety impact. Our customers run critical infrastructure. Security here isn’t an abstract compliance exercise — it matters.
• You’ll build, not just maintain. This is a greenfield opportunity to shape the security program at a company that’s scaling fast.
• No bureaucracy. You’ll work directly with engineering and leadership. Your recommendations get implemented, not lost in committee.
• Competitive equity. Full-time permanent employees receive meaningful ownership in a company with significant upside.