PhD Intern, Security Engineer (2027) (Cybersecurity)

Location: San Francisco, CA or New York, NY; internship must be held from one of Figma’s US hub offices, starting in May or June 2027, with in-person onboarding required.

Salary: $74 USD per hour; housing stipend and travel reimbursement are also offered.

Company

Figma develops a collaborative design platform that helps teams brainstorm, prototype, translate designs into code, and iterate with AI in real time.

What you will do

• Perform technical security assessments, code audits, and design reviews.
• Design and develop solutions that prevent or mitigate vulnerabilities across products, services, and infrastructure.
• Support security investigations by developing datasets, tooling, and analysis for incident scoping, root-cause analysis, and faster detection and response.
• Translate threat intelligence about relevant threat actors and techniques into detection coverage, hardening of high-risk surfaces, and security strategy.
• Partner with teams across the company and participate in security reviews, consulting, vulnerability triage, and incident response.

Requirements

• Currently enrolled as a fourth- or fifth-year senior PhD student in Computer Science, focused on Security or a related field.
• Proficiency in at least one general-purpose programming language.
• Academic or industry track record applying security techniques, with strong domain knowledge in at least one relevant area such as AI safety/evaluation, usable security, anti-abuse, anti-fraud, or detection and response.
• Strong knowledge of statistical methods and/or experimental design.
• Experience solving sophisticated problems, comparing alternative solutions and trade-offs, and evaluating diverse points of view to determine a path forward.

Nice to have

• Related industry experience through a previous internship or full-time role.
• Security publications at leading conferences such as USENIX Security, NDSS, CCS, or IEEE S&P.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills with cross-functional collaboration experience.
• Experience using AI tools such as GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude to write, debug, and optimize code.
• Understanding of at least two of Linux/Unix/Mac-based systems security, AWS security, cloud SaaS security, applied cryptography, anti-abuse, or web application security.

Culture & Benefits

• 12- or 16-week internship with mentorship and collaboration across Figma.
• Hourly base pay of $74, plus a housing stipend and travel reimbursement.
• Equal employment opportunities and reasonable accommodations throughout the application, interview, and employment process.
• Cameras must remain on during video interviews, and in-person onboarding is required.

Hiring process

• Applications are limited to five during any rolling 30-day period.
• Candidates may not reapply to the same role while an application is active or within 90 days after rejection.