Security at Snap
Security Engineering at Snap
At Snap, Security Engineers don't just secure systems—they build them. Our teams develop the platforms, services, and security controls that protect Snapchat’s applications, infrastructure, identities, and data at global scale. By combining software engineering with deep security expertise, they tackle some of the industry's most challenging problems in application security, cloud security, identity, threat detection, privacy and spam & abuse.
As a Security or Privacy Engineer here, you'll help shape how security and privacy are built into Snapchat—creating scalable solutions that protect our users while empowering teams to move quickly and innovate with confidence.
Explore our teams
Application Security
As an Application Security Engineer, you’ll help secure Snapchat’s products and services across mobile, backend, and development infrastructure. You’ll build and improve security platforms, conduct threat modeling and secure code reviews, and partner closely with engineering teams to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities before they reach production. From strengthening mobile and backend defenses to developing AI-powered security tooling, you’ll help embed security into every stage of the software development lifecycle and shape the future of product security at Snap.
What you’ll work on:
- AI-driven security reviews and security automation
- Mobile and backend security hardening
- Secure code review and threat modeling
Our interview process
Below is an overview of the interview rounds and competencies that may be assessed throughout the interview process. Depending on your target level, the order of these rounds may differ or you might have some rounds omitted. Each technical interview will begin with approximately 15 minutes of behavioral discussion focused on experiences aligned with Snap’s values. Following your answer, your interviewer will transition into the technical portion of the interview assessing one of the below competencies:
Security Domain Knowledge
Evaluates foundational and applied security knowledge, tailored to the candidates domains. Expect to reason through real-world security scenarios, discuss common threat models, and communicate practical trade-offs across different areas of security such as Privacy, IAM, Application Security, Infrastructure Security, Detection & Response, and Spam & Abuse.
Security Threat Modeling
Assesses a candidate’s ability to systematically identify, analyze, and prioritize security risks across systems. Expect to reason about attacker behavior, abuse scenarios, and mitigation strategies while clearly communicating trade-offs and real-world security considerations.
Security System Design
Focused on designing secure systems that solve security-specific problems at scale. Expectations involve translating security requirements and threat models into practical architectures, identifying attack surfaces and abuse cases, and selecting appropriate mitigations while balancing trade-offs.
Coding / AI Assisted Coding
Coding will be evaluated with & without the use of AI. The non AI coding round will cover foundational programming concepts such as data manipulation, common data structures, control flow, and functions, and may include tasks like parsing logs, reviewing vulnerable code, or writing an exploit. The AI assisted coding round gauges the ability to clarify requirements, create a plan, and use an AI for tasks like generating code, debugging, or revising a solution.
Privacy Depth / Breadth
Privacy domain knowledge is only evaluated for Privacy Engineering candidates. For those loops, rounds are typically focused on evaluating both the depth and breadth of a candidate’s privacy engineering expertise. Discussions may cover designing privacy-preserving systems, applying privacy principles under realistic constraints, and reasoning through trade-offs between privacy guarantees and system complexities.
Leadership
Depending on the target level, candidates may participate in a leadership interview focused on collaboration, influence, ownership, communication, mentorship and decision-making. Interviewers will assess how you navigate ambiguity, including thoughtful adoption of AI-assisted workflows, through examples from your past experience.
Q&A
The Q&A session is an opportunity for candidates to learn more about the team, projects, and company. Candidates are encouraged to come prepared with thoughtful questions about the role, team culture, technical challenges, cross-functional collaboration, growth opportunities, or life at Snap.