# Engineering Manager, Agent & Product Security
**Company:** [Cursor](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/cursor)
Lead Cursor's agent and product security initiative as Engineering Manager, architecting security primitives for autonomous AI agents in software development. You'll build identity, authorization, and isolation systems that enable trustworthy agent autonomy while maintaining tight coupling with product strategy. This role requires deep expertise in application security, threat modeling, and AI agent safety—combined with strong engineering leadership and cross-functional collaboration skills.
**Role:** Engineering Manager
**Seniority:** Manager
**Locations:** New York
**Salary:** 250000–420000 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cursor/635bd64f-b554-4d37-9128-cefad35913af)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/cursor/engineering-manager-agent-product-security
---
## Responsibilities

- Define Security Primitives for Autonomous Agents: Chart the strategic path from supervised to autonomous agents by architecting and defining novel security primitives that enable safe agent autonomy. Lead technical decisions on identity systems, delegated authority models, and policy enforcement mechanisms that currently lack industry precedent, ensuring these foundational decisions align with Cursor's product vision.
- Engineer Multi-Layer Isolation Architecture: Design and oversee implementation of robust isolation mechanisms including tenancy boundaries, workspace segregation, secret management, and data protection schemes. Build systems resilient against real-world adversarial threats targeting valuable customer codebases, with emphasis on defense-in-depth and zero-trust architecture principles.
- Build Agent Authority Infrastructure: Architect identity, authentication, and authorization systems enabling agents to hold verifiable responsibility within defined boundaries. Implement scoped permissions, policy enforcement engines, and secure tool execution frameworks that provide full accountability while preserving agent autonomy and operational efficiency.
- Develop Security Controls for Product-Market Fit: Create intuitive, production-grade customer-facing security controls that enable security-conscious organizations to confidently adopt agent autonomy. Design measurement frameworks and success metrics for security outcomes, ensuring controls are both user-friendly and cryptographically sound for enterprise adoption.
- Lead and Scale Security Engineering Team: Build, mentor, and develop a high-performing security engineering team with a flatter organizational structure. Remain technically engaged through code review and implementation contributions, maintain rapid execution velocity, and establish a culture of shipping reliable, testable security infrastructure while fostering technical growth and cross-functional collaboration.
- Drive Cross-Functional Alignment on Security Strategy: Collaborate closely with product, infrastructure, ML, and customer success teams to align security decisions with product roadmap and customer needs. Translate security requirements into product capability enablers, negotiating technical tradeoffs and ensuring security architecture decisions directly influence and unblock product releases.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Formal education in computer science, engineering, or equivalent field with strong foundation in systems design, algorithms, and computer security principles. Equivalent professional experience can substitute for formal degree requirement."}

### technical

- {"name":"Application Security & Threat Modeling","description":"Advanced expertise in modern application security architecture, including threat modeling frameworks, attack surface analysis, and risk assessment methodologies. Demonstrated ability to design systems resilient against sophisticated attack vectors in production environments."}
- {"name":"Identity & Authorization Systems","description":"Deep technical knowledge of identity management, authentication protocols (OAuth, SAML, mTLS), authorization frameworks (RBAC, ABAC), and policy enforcement engines. Experience building zero-trust architectures and implementing principle-of-least-privilege enforcement."}
- {"name":"Data Isolation & Tenancy","description":"Hands-on experience designing and implementing multi-tenant systems with strong isolation guarantees, including logical and physical data segregation, secret management systems, and cryptographic isolation techniques for protecting sensitive customer data."}
- {"name":"AI Agent Security","description":"Practical understanding of AI agent architectures, tool usage patterns, and emerging security risks including prompt injection, jailbreaking, unauthorized data exfiltration, and privilege escalation in agentic systems. Experience designing mitigations that remain effective against novel attack approaches."}
- {"name":"Secure System Design","description":"Expertise in building secure-by-default platform architecture, including secure tool execution environments, input validation, output sanitization, and secure software supply chain principles. Understanding of the relationship between security and performance tradeoffs."}
- {"name":"Infrastructure & Platform Security","description":"Solid understanding of infrastructure security, containerization, secrets management, audit logging, and operational security practices. Experience with infrastructure-as-code and continuous deployment systems with strong security posture requirements."}

### experience

- {"name":"Production Security Engineering Leadership","description":"5-10 years leading engineering teams that shipped production systems with high security, reliability, or platform stakes. Demonstrated track record scaling teams, mentoring engineers, and maintaining technical excellence while managing organizational complexity."}
- {"name":"Shipping Under Ambiguity & Novel Constraints","description":"Experience setting technical strategy in greenfield or low-precedent problem domains, making architectural decisions with incomplete information, committing to directions, and pivoting based on implementation reality. Comfort with strategic decision-making where industry standards don't yet exist."}
- {"name":"Security-Centric Product Development","description":"Track record shipping security-sensitive products or features where security requirements directly influenced product capability and go-to-market strategy. Experience seeing security as a product enabler rather than a constraint, with understanding of how security choices drive adoption and competitive advantage."}
- {"name":"Cross-Functional Technical Partnership","description":"Demonstrated ability partnering effectively across product, infrastructure, ML/AI, and customer-facing teams. Experience translating between security requirements, product strategy, and technical constraints while building consensus across competing priorities."}
- {"name":"Hands-On Technical Contribution","description":"Ongoing practice writing and reviewing code while managing; comfort staying technically grounded in implementation details of your team's systems. Experience maintaining technical credibility and unblocking teams through direct technical problem-solving."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Security Architecture Design","description":"Expert-level ability to design comprehensive security architectures that balance protection, usability, and performance. Capable of identifying attack surfaces, designing defense-in-depth strategies, and making principled tradeoff decisions."}
- {"name":"Threat Modeling & Risk Assessment","description":"Proficiency in structured threat modeling methodologies (STRIDE, PASTA) and risk quantification. Ability to think like an attacker, anticipate novel threat vectors, and prioritize security investments based on impact and likelihood."}
- {"name":"Team Leadership & Mentoring","description":"Strong people leadership skills including hiring talented engineers, providing constructive technical feedback, fostering psychological safety, and creating opportunities for growth. Ability to scale team while maintaining technical culture and rapid execution."}
- {"name":"Systems Thinking & Architectural Judgment","description":"Demonstrated ability reasoning from user workflows to system architecture, identifying critical components, modeling data flow, and understanding emergent properties and failure modes. Strong judgment about what matters and where to invest engineering effort."}
- {"name":"Secure Coding & Code Review","description":"Hands-on proficiency implementing secure code patterns, performing security-focused code reviews, and building secure software development practices. Understanding of common vulnerabilities and secure implementation techniques across modern programming languages."}
- {"name":"Strategic Communication","description":"Ability to articulate complex security concepts to non-technical audiences, write clear technical specifications, and communicate architectural decisions to engineering and product teams. Skill translating security requirements into actionable engineering constraints."}

### preferred

- {"name":"API Security & Secure Service Design","description":"Experience designing and securing service-oriented architectures, implementing secure APIs, managing API authentication and rate-limiting, and preventing common API vulnerabilities like injection attacks and broken object-level authorization."}
- {"name":"Secrets Management & Credential Handling","description":"Hands-on experience implementing secrets management systems, key rotation policies, credential injection patterns, and preventing secrets from leaking in logs, error messages, or source control. Familiarity with tools like Vault or cloud secrets managers."}
- {"name":"Audit Logging & Security Observability","description":"Experience designing comprehensive audit logging systems, security monitoring, detection engineering, and incident response infrastructure. Understanding of how to make security events visible and actionable for operations teams."}
- {"name":"Supply Chain Security","description":"Familiarity with secure software supply chain practices, dependency management security, SBOM generation, vulnerability scanning, and preventing attacks targeting build and deployment pipelines."}
- {"name":"Cryptography Application","description":"Practical understanding of cryptographic principles and their application to real systems. Experience selecting and implementing appropriate cryptographic algorithms, managing keys securely, and understanding limitations of cryptographic solutions."}
- {"name":"LLM & AI Agent Security","description":"Experience working with large language models, prompt engineering, or AI agent systems with focus on security implications. Understanding of emerging AI-specific security threats, mitigations, and the intersection of AI capabilities with access control."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"Secret Management (HashiCorp Vault / AWS Secrets Manager)","description":"Essential tooling for managing credentials, secrets rotation, and secure credential injection for agent execution."}
- {"name":"Threat Modeling Tools (STRIDE / PASTA)","description":"Structured approaches for identifying and mitigating security threats in agent and product architecture."}
- {"name":"Container & Isolation Technology (Docker / Kubernetes / gVisor)","description":"Technologies for implementing secure isolation boundaries and sandboxed agent execution environments."}
- {"name":"Security Scanning & SAST Tools","description":"Static application security testing, dependency scanning, and code vulnerability detection tools."}
- {"name":"Audit & Compliance Tooling","description":"Systems for implementing comprehensive audit logging, compliance reporting, and security observability."}

### others

- {"name":"AI Agent Architecture & Tool Use","description":"Deep understanding of how autonomous agents discover, invoke, and handle tool responses; critical for designing appropriate security boundaries."}
- {"name":"Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)","description":"Practices for integrating security throughout development, including threat modeling, secure code review, and security testing."}
- {"name":"Adversarial Thinking & Red Teaming","description":"Mindset and techniques for thinking like an attacker, identifying novel attack vectors, and evaluating mitigation effectiveness."}
- {"name":"Cloud Platform Security (AWS / GCP / Azure)","description":"Understanding of cloud security primitives, identity services, networking controls, and cloud-native security best practices."}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Primary relational database likely used for storing identity, authorization policies, and audit logs."}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"In-memory data store for high-performance access control checks, session management, and real-time policy enforcement."}

### languages

- {"name":"TypeScript/JavaScript","description":"Primary language for Cursor's agent implementation and product platform; essential for understanding architecture and maintaining technical credibility with the team."}
- {"name":"Python","description":"Common language for security tooling, threat modeling, and automation scripts. Relevant for agent behavior analysis and security testing."}
- {"name":"Rust","description":"Used for performance-critical security components and systems-level isolation mechanisms; valuable for understanding low-level security boundaries."}

### frameworks

- {"name":"OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect","description":"Modern authentication and authorization standards required for agent identity and delegation systems."}
- {"name":"Zero-Trust Architecture","description":"Foundational security architecture philosophy essential for agent-centric security model design."}
- {"name":"RBAC / ABAC Frameworks","description":"Role-based and attribute-based access control frameworks for implementing scoped permissions and policy enforcement."}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Competitive Equity Package","description":"Meaningful equity stake as early manager-track team member at high-growth AI developer tools company, aligning personal success with company value creation."}
- {"name":"Comprehensive Health Coverage","description":"Medical, dental, and vision insurance with company contributions for you and eligible dependents, ensuring holistic healthcare coverage."}
- {"name":"Flexible Work Arrangements","description":"Work-from-home flexibility with access to San Francisco office, supporting work-life integration that works for your situation."}
- {"name":"Professional Development Budget","description":"Annual budget for conferences, courses, certifications, and learning resources to stay current with rapidly evolving security landscape."}
- {"name":"Generous Time Off Policy","description":"Unlimited or generous vacation policy supporting rest and renewal, with company culture that encourages taking time off."}
- {"name":"401(k) Retirement Plan","description":"Company-sponsored retirement savings plan with matching contributions, supporting long-term financial planning."}
- {"name":"Flat Organizational Structure","description":"Minimal bureaucracy with direct influence on company decisions and product direction; rapid decision-making and broad impact for your work."}
- {"name":"Talent-Dense Team Environment","description":"Work alongside exceptionally talented engineers and product leaders with passion for solving hard problems, creating stimulating work environment and fast learning opportunities."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 420000
- **min:** 250000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

## Full description
Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truth-seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code.

**About the role**

Cursor’s agents work inside the codebases of some of the most security-conscious engineering organizations in the world — holding credentials, reading untrusted content, running tools, and shipping changes. Today they act on authority delegated per task. Where we’re headed, they’ll work more like coworkers: autonomous over long horizons, holding standing responsibilities, initiating work, and collaborating with people and other agents. The security models that future needs — identity and accountability for autonomous workers, standing authority rather than per-task permission, agent-to-agent trust, oversight that scales with always-on autonomy — mostly don’t exist yet.

As Engineering Manager for Agent & Product Security, you’ll lead the team that makes agentic software development trustworthy. This team owns the security boundaries between customers, data, tools, repositories, workspaces, and agent authority across Cursor’s product and agents and designs the primitives behind them: agent identity, delegated authority, policy enforcement, secure tool execution, and prompt-injection containment. Little of this has settled precedent, so the team’s decisions carry unusual weight for Cursor and for how the industry approaches these problems.

Security here is tightly coupled to product strategy: customers adopt agent autonomy as fast as we can make it trustworthy, so the boundaries your team makes safe directly determine what the product can ship. You’ll help set that direction.

**What you’ll do**

* Chart the path from supervised agents to trusted autonomous ones: define the security primitives that enable agent autonomy, and lead the team that builds them.
* Engineer the isolation that makes Cursor safe to run inside customers’ most valuable codebases: tenancy, workspace, secret, and data protections designed for real adversaries.
* Build the authority infrastructure autonomous agents need: identity, scoped permissions, policy enforcement, and secure tool execution, so an agent can hold real responsibility with verifiable limits and full accountability.
* Build customer-facing security controls that are understandable, usable, and strong enough for Cursor’s most security-sensitive customers, with crisp success metrics for security outcomes.
* Hire, coach, and grow a high-performing security engineering team while staying technically close to the work: write and review code where useful, and keep execution fast and technically grounded.

**You may be a fit if**

* You’ve led engineering teams shipping production systems with high security, reliability, or platform stakes — and you want a problem space where much of the answer isn’t written down yet.
* You have strong product and systems judgment: you can reason from user workflows to architecture, threat models, enforcement points, and operational tradeoffs — and you see security as something that enables product capability, not only restricts it.
* You understand modern application security, authorization, tenancy, identity, secrets, data isolation, and secure-by-default platform design.
* You have good instincts about AI agents: how they use tools, where authority should come from, how prompt injection and exfiltration show up in practice, and how to build mitigations that hold up against creative adversaries.
* You’re comfortable operating in ambiguity: you can set strategy where precedent is thin, commit to a direction, and stay close enough to the implementation to know when to change it.
* You can partner well across product, infrastructure, ML, and customer-facing teams.

#LI-DNI