Platform Security Engineer

🧡 Coverflex

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⚙️ TL;DR (The Essentials)

Role: Platform Security Engineer
Seniority Level: Senior
Type: Individual Contributor
Languages: English (main) / Portuguese / Spanish / Italian
Main Tools: AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Datadog, CI/CD security scanning, identity and secrets management
Main Stack: Elixir/Phoenix, PostgreSQL, React Native (Expo)
Location: Remote (Europe only)
Compensation:

• Base Salary: 50.000€ to 67.000€ gross yearly

• Bonus / Commissions: No

• Equity: Yes – Stock Options under our Equity Incentive Plan

• Benefits: All Coverflex benefits apply

• Contract Type: Permanent

💥 Your Impact

Your role will play a major role in our success because…
→ We look after people's benefits and personal data in several countries, so trust is at the heart of what we do. As we grow, you'll make sure our security grows with us. You'll bring deep security expertise to DevX, the team that builds the platform and paved road for our engineers, and you'll make the secure path the easiest path for everyone.

You’ll know you’re successful when, after 90 days, you’ve…
-> Shipped your first secure-by-default workflow for production operations, with access that's controlled, auditable and easy to use
-> Shaped how we run security in our delivery pipeline: priorities, response targets and automation
-> Led a resilience exercise that sharpened our recovery playbooks

How we’ll measure success:

• Main KPI 1: More production operations running through secure, self-service and observable tooling

• Main KPI 2: Security findings caught early in the delivery pipeline and resolved quickly, with automation doing the heavy lifting

• Main KPI 3: Business continuity we can count on, with clear recovery targets that we test regularly

• Secondary KPI 1: Edge protection that adapts to our applications and keeps the user experience smooth

• Secondary KPI 2: Engineers adopt the security guardrails and are happy with them

⚡ Reality Check - What Makes This Role Hard

Let’s be real - here’s what makes this role challenging:

• You're a platform engineer first. Security is your main focus, but you're a full member of DevX. You'll share the team's wider work: infrastructure, CI/CD, developer tooling and experience, observability and incident troubleshooting. Expect a real share of your time on work that isn't about security.

• The challenge is to improve our security posture while improving developer experience, raising security awareness across engineering teams, and making the secure path the easiest path.

• A big part of the work is delivering meaningful, production-grade improvements without slowing developer throughput or impacting platform users. This requires clear prioritisation, safe rollout patterns, and tight feedback loops so we can move quickly while minimising operational risk and unnecessary friction.

👤 You

Must-haves (evidence, not years)

• Owned application or platform security in a production cloud environment, with clear examples of impact

• Strong cloud security fundamentals: IAM and identity plumbing (SSO/OIDC), secrets management, and least privilege in practice

• Strong platform engineering across infrastructure as code, CI/CD with security built in, and observability

• Strong experience running Kubernetes in production, including workload security and access controls

• Cloud networking and edge: VPC boundaries, DNS, TLS, load balancing, CDN and WAF tuning

• Reliability in practice: SLOs, on-call, threat modelling, incident command, and postmortems

• Backup, restore and disaster recovery designed and actually exercised

• Treats the platform as a product: measures adoption and developer experience

• Uses AI tooling to accelerate engineering work, and builds it into the platform (agents, MCP, assisted operations)

• Reads and writes code well enough to fix problems, not just report them

• Fluent English required

Nice-to-have

• ISO 27001, SOC 2 or DORA experience

• Fintech, payroll, or other regulated-data background

• Detection engineering or SIEM experience

• PostgreSQL operations and safe schema migrations

• Elixir, or comfort picking up a functional language

• Cloud cost awareness and FinOps practices

• Certifications welcome, but practical evidence weighs more

🧬 Your DNA

• Enabler, not a blocker: you make security the default through automation, paved-road patterns and self-service guardrails

• Builder at heart: you'd rather ship the fix than file the report, and you work alongside engineers to raise the bar together

• Pragmatic about risk: you weigh costs and benefits, explain trade-offs clearly, and prefer small, safe changes that add up

• Written-first communicator: you write decisions down and share context early so others can move fast

• Deeply curious: you dig into hard problems and incidents, then turn what you learn into tooling and better defaults

You’ll probably find this frustrating if…

• You see security as a gate to guard rather than a path to pave

• You prefer auditing and reporting to building and fixing things hands-on

• You measure progress in policies written rather than in real improvements

• You do your best work with a ready-made roadmap rather than shaping one yourself

👥 Manager & Team

Meet Your Manager

Hiring Manager: Rui Alves - Tech Lead, Platform Engineering
Location: Portugal
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rui-alves-ab05959

Profile Snapshot:

• Energy: Steady and low-ego. I try to keep things calm, especially when priorities shift or incidents happen.

• Communication: Structured, transparent, and written-first when it helps. I document decisions, trade-offs, and next steps so alignment survives the meeting.

• Feedback Style: Direct and kind. I give feedback early and specifically, and I expect the same in return.

How to work with me - in the Manager's own words:

Expect a collaborative environment with clear priorities and a bias for small, safe changes that compound. I’ll help remove blockers, protect focus, and make sure we’re shipping work that improves both security posture and developer experience. I value calm, ownership, and good written communication.

Your Team

You’ll work day-to-day with:

• Tina, Platform Engineer, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinazhouhui

• Hugo, Platform Engineer, https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugo-sousa99

Key Stakeholders:

• Tiago Fernandes (CTO)

• Bruno Oliveira (VP Engineering)

• Luís Coelho (Quality Team Lead)

Team Rituals:

• Daily standup

• Weekly planning

• Bi-weekly retrospective

💜 Access & Belonging (Equal Opportunity)

We hire for impact and potential, not pedigree.
We welcome applications from people with non-linear careers, career breaks, caregiving gaps, and those changing fields.

No discrimination on the basis of age, disability, gender identity/expression, marital or family status, pregnancy, neurodivergence, race/ethnicity, religion/belief, sexual orientation, or any other protected ground.

Assessment fairness:
We anchor on evidence of outcomes (what you shipped, moved, or influenced).
We actively de-bias by using structured rubrics, multiple assessors, and blind screening most of the time  (we won’t know your name, gender, or personal info until the interview stage).

📬 Application Clarity

No cover letter required.
Apply with your LinkedIn or upload your CV.
You will be asked a few short, relevant questions.

Total candidate time investment: ~5–6 hours end-to-end.

🧩 Hiring Stages (What to Expect, Why & How Long)

1. CV / LinkedIn Screen — Signal check vs must-haves
• Done by People + Hiring Manager.
• You’ll hear from us within 7 business days.

2. Quick Interview (Intro Call) — Mutual fit & context • 20-30 min
With DevX. Covers role scope, salary, location, and timeline.

3. Deep Dive: Engineering Mindset — How you think about engineering • 45–60 min
With DevX and an Engineering Manager. Built around outcomes, decisions, trade-offs and collaboration, using examples from your own experience.

4. Deep Dive: Technical — How you design and build • 45-60 min
With a Staff or Architecture engineer. A technical conversation about platform, cloud and security design, and the reasoning behind your choices.

5. Technical Pairing challenge — How you work hands-on • ≤90 min
With two DevX engineers. A practical infrastructure-as-code / CI/CD exercise. We look at how you approach the problem, how you work with others, and how you balance security with developer experience.

6. Culture Interview — Walkthrough + Q&A • 20–30 min
You’ll get actionable feedback either way.

7. Final Conversation (CEO / C-Level) — Values, strategy, and your growth • 30–45 min

🤖 AI & Hiring Tools Transparency

We use a few tools to reduce bias and improve documentation, not to make hiring decisions.

• Teamtailor anonymisation: profiles are reviewed without relying on names/personal identifiers.

• Meeting recording tools (e.g., Talka.ai): may be used to capture interviews so we can focus on the conversation.

• LLM: may be used to turn interview notes/transcripts into clear, structured summaries.

Important: every application is reviewed by a human, and no decision or rejection is made by AI. If recording is used, we’ll be transparent and (where required) ask for consent.

⏱️ Speed & Communication

• Decision: within 4 weeks of your application.

• Updates: weekly if the process runs longer.

• Scheduling: interviews between 10:00–16:00 CET (flexible across Europe).

• Feedback: from the Deep Dive: Engineering Mindset stage onwards, you’ll always receive written or verbal feedback - what went well, and what to strengthen next time.