* **Location**: Paris (75002), 2 days remote per week
* **Company**: [Escape](https://escape.tech/) : Leading AI Cybersecurity Startup
* **Cofounders**: CEO [Tristan Kalos](https://linkedin.com/in/tkalos) and CTO [Antoine Carossio](https://linkedin.com/in/acarossio)
* **Compensation**: **€70-100k base** + 0.05% BSCPE depending on seniority and scope
* **Product team**: PM + Security PM + you
* **Engineering Team**: 15 Engineers, 4 Technical Leads
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**About Escape**
Escape is offensive security for the teams that are 100x outnumbered. We build AI agents that find and exploit vulnerabilities in modern applications, APIs, and microservices: the way a real attacker would, but at the speed of a CI pipeline.
We're a Y Combinator W23 company. We just closed an **$18M Series A in March 2026 led by Balderton Capital** (with Uncorrelated Ventures, IRIS, and YC following on). Our customers and partners include Zoom, Schibsted, Wiz, Pandadoc, and a growing list of teams who've stopped pretending annual pen tests are enough. We're 40 people split between Paris and NYC, scaling to 80 in the next 12 months
The product surface is real: ASM, business-logic-aware DAST, and AI Pentesting GA-ing this year. The competitive thesis is that LLMs collapsed the cost of offensive engineering by 1000x, and the companies that ship that capability into production first will own the next decade of the category. We're betting we're those companies.
**About the Role**\
As the Senior Software Engineer, you will guide and mentor a team of talented backend engineers and security / AI researchers. You’ll set technical direction, champion innovation, and ensure research translates into impactful production solutions. This is a hands-on leadership role where your expertise will accelerate our AI-driven detection capabilities and make a tangible impact on the future of automated security.
**What You'll Do**
* **Agentic scanning systems:** Build systems that autonomously explore applications, maintain context, and execute complex testing strategies.
* **Security detection engine** : Design and implement reliable, production-grade vulnerability detection logic (injection, auth issues, business logic flaws, etc.).
* **AI-driven testing:** Integrate LLMs and structured reasoning into scanning workflows to improve coverage and reduce false positives.
* **Distributed infrastructure:** Work on systems that orchestrate thousands of concurrent scans (Kubernetes, queues, resource management).
* **Performance & reliability:** Ensure scans are fast, deterministic, and cost-efficient despite high complexity and concurrency.
* **Core platform design:** Contribute to architecture decisions around memory systems, execution environments, and data models.
**Our Tech Stack & Focus**
* **Languages:** Python (primary), Go (performance/network components)
* **Runtime:** Containerized workloads on Kubernetes (EKS), supporting long and resource-intensive scans
* **Scaling:** Kubernetes Jobs & queue-driven autoscaling
* **Web Automation:** Playwright + headless Chromium
* **Data:** PostgreSQL, S3-compatible object storage, Redis (limited use)
* **Messaging:** Kafka
* **Observability:** OpenTelemetry, Grafana Cloud
* **CI/CD & Infra:** GitLab CI, Terraform
**Perks & Benefits**
* 💸 Significant equity (Stock Options/BSPCE) – become a core stakeholder in Escape’s journey
* ❤️🩹 Top-tier health insurance with Alan
* 🍕 Meal vouchers with Swile
* 💪 EGYM Wellpass sport subscription
* 📚 Continuous learning: budgets for books and online courses
* 💻 Premium equipment to support your work
* 🎁 Dedicated time for open-source projects
* 🌍 Present research at top international conferences (RSAC, BlackHat, DEFCON, BSides, APIDays)
**About You**
* 4+ years of experience in backend engineering, security research, or applied R&D in a product environment
* Strong software engineering fundamentals and ability to work across domains (systems, networking, web architectures)
* Proficient in at least one backend language (Python, Go, or similar)
* Experience designing and shipping production systems with measurable impact
* Ability to translate complex ideas or research into reliable, scalable implementations
* Strong analytical mindset, with a focus on pragmatism and impact
* Comfortable collaborating across engineering and security to deliver end-to-end solutions
Nice to have:
* Experience in application security (web security, pentesting, bug bounty, etc.)
* Exposure to AI/LLM-based systems
* Familiarity with browser automation or large-scale distributed systems
Ready to lead the next wave of AI-powered vulnerability detection? Apply now to join Escape and make a real impact in cybersecurity!
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
