Software Engineer - Infrastructure (Senior+) at Cogent Security
San Francisco, CA
$100,000–$300,000from the description
Aug 2, 2026
San Francisco, CA
Sep 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A Senior+ Infrastructure Engineer role at an early-stage Applied AI cybersecurity startup, joining a small Core Platform team responsible for data infrastructure, security systems, and the platform layer that AI agents use to build and ship product. The work spans storage-level optimizations in ClickHouse and Postgres, enabling on-premises deployments for enterprise customers, and hardening security systems — requiring strong hands-on coding alongside infrastructure depth.
Senior level · 5+ years · San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA · Full-time
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How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 250 people in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 190–330
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $190,744 (middle half $167,095–$224,501). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 4, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The title reads 'Senior+', which the posting frames as a high-ownership, early-stage role; requirements (5-7 years, end-to-end project ownership) are consistent with Senior rather than Staff or Principal.
Location is inferred as San Francisco Bay Area based on the California salary disclosure and the company's profile; no explicit city is stated in the posting.
The role blends software development (building platform layers, data pipelines, on-prem deployment) with infrastructure/SRE work — the SOC runner-up (15-1244) reflects that operations dimension, but the emphasis on hands-on coding and building new systems tips the primary classification to Software Developers.
The salary range ($100K–$300K) is unusually wide; the posting notes it varies by location, level, and experience.
Envoy and Istio are listed together as alternatives for API gateway auth experience under Bonus Points.
SPIFFE and SPIRE are listed together under Bonus Points as agent identity tooling; emitted as one skill with SPIRE as an alternative.
MicroVM (Runloop) appears only under Bonus Points.
'Agentic coding fundamentals' and 'AI-forward capacity' are mentioned as required but name no specific tool or framework, so they are omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
Read the full posting
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