Staff Product Security Engineer, Secure Design (Kernel and Virtualization)
DigitalOcean · United States
Posted about 3 months ago · $180,000-$215,000
or apply directly on DigitalOcean's site. We never take the application ourselves.
Is this posting real?
- This role has been open
- 82 days DigitalOcean's roles stay open a median of 83 days
- Reposted
- No
- Salary listed
- Yes 68% of DigitalOcean's roles list one
- Ghost-job risk at DigitalOcean
- high 151 stale, 1 reposted of 151 open
- Hiring momentum
- 197 roles opened in the last 90 days ↑ up vs. the prior 90 days
- Last confirmed on the employer's board
- 2026-10-25
Measured from postings appearing on and disappearing from DigitalOcean's own greenhouse board since 2026-08-03. Full hiring picture for DigitalOcean.
About this role
As a Staff Product Security Engineer at DigitalOcean, you will focus on assessing and mitigating security risks within the virtualization stack. Your role involves building frameworks for threat modeling, proposing defense-in-depth mitigations, and collaborating with engineering teams to implement security measures. Additionally, you will mentor teams on security best practices and oversee the vulnerability management program.
- benefits
- 4/5
- freshness
- 1/5
- career value
- 4/5
- role clarity
- 4/5
- pay transparency
- 5/5
Scored from the posting itself — how clearly the role is described, how much it says about pay and benefits, and how recently it was listed. Not a judgement of DigitalOcean as an employer.
What you need
- Deep familiarity with at least one kernel security feature (ex: AppArmor, SELinux, Landlock, etc.)
- Capable of assessing and understanding the performance implications of code changes to virtualization stacks (especially in Qemu and KVM), built from hands-on experience.
- A record of partnering with internal engineering teams to tackle security problems across an entire stack with empathy and creativity.
- Ability to clearly communicate security topics and vulnerability classes (e.g. memory corruption, privilege escalation, TOCTOU, etc) and ability to provide actionable direction to product teams.
- Working knowledge of modern development concepts (virtualized environments, containerization, continuous integration + delivery).
Nice to have
- 5+ years of writing systems level code (embedded systems, kernel, assembly or similar).
- Experience guiding software teams on secure architecture design.
- Written code for an embedded system (raspberry pi, arduino, etc).
- Experience building or reviewing threat models and ability to craft malicious user, attacker, and abuse/misuse cases.
- An understanding of patches and mitigations for hardware side-channel attacks.
What you get
- Salary range of $180,000-$215,000
- Equity compensation, which may include a new hire equity grant and participation in the Employee Stock Purchase Program
- Participation in DigitalOcean’s annual bonus plan
- Reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education
- Flexible time off
- Local team meetups
Worth weighing
- Remote role
- Salary range provided, but no specific details on bonuses or equity terms beyond general eligibility
- Vague on specific tools or technologies used in the virtualization stack
- Emphasis on collaboration with engineering teams may require strong interpersonal skills
Summarised from DigitalOcean's posting. Read the full original.
Listed by DigitalOcean on their greenhouse job board, last confirmed open on 2026-10-25. PitchMeAI is not the employer.
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