About this role
Designing, testing, and deploying autonomous and semi-autonomous AI agents that integrate natively with enterprise security stacks forms the core daily work for this role. Team members translate traditional human-centric SOC playbooks into deterministic and heuristic agentic pipelines while optimizing production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation workflows. Appian maintains an Information Security department dedicated to shielding critical corporate and customer assets from emerging cyber threats and vulnerabilities.
Operating from the McLean headquarters five days a week, engineers collaborate directly with elite security architects to build intrusion detection capabilities and cloud-based defense strategies. Ideal candidates possess a strong foundation in programming and security concepts, taking pride in writing clean, asynchronous code that bridges the gap between machine learning research and practical cybersecurity. The position suits individuals who thrive in ambiguity and enjoy breaking down abstract security challenges into execution-ready architectures.
What you will do
- Design, test, and deploy autonomous and semi-autonomous AI agents that integrate natively with the enterprise security stack.
- Translate traditional, human-centric SOC playbooks and analyst workflows into deterministic and heuristic agentic pipelines using DAGs and multi-agent routing.
- Design, optimize, and maintain production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation workflows to inject real-time security context into agent prompts.
- Continuously evaluate, benchmark, and optimize LLM performance, context window utilization, latency, and cost-efficiency across various models.
- Collaborate with Tier 3 Analysts and Threat Hunters to engineer seamless human-in-the-loop handoff mechanisms for escalating complex anomalies.
- Implement robust security boundaries around the LLM architecture to mitigate risks like prompt injection, data poisoning, and model tool-abuse.
What you need
- Hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields with at least 2 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms, or a Master's degree with at least 1 year of experience.
- Demonstrate at least 2 years of programming experience using Python, Go, Scala, or Java.
- Ship clean, production-grade, asynchronous code while paying close attention to system architecture alongside model accuracy.
- Bridge the gap between AI research and practical cybersecurity by implementing guardrails that prevent unauthorized actions during operations.
- Thrive in ambiguity by breaking down abstract, high-level security problems into concrete, execution-ready AI systems.
Nice to have
- 3 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
- Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services within security operations or threat intelligence.
- Hands-on experience building multi-agent or complex orchestration systems using LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI, or Semantic Kernel.
- Proven experience working with production Vector Databases like Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus, or Weaviate for semantic chunking and embedding generation.
- Experience deploying and scaling AI workloads in containerized cloud environments using Kubernetes, EKS, or AKS.
Benefits
- 401(k) plan with company match
- Flexible time off
- Paid parental leave
- Medical, dental, and vision plans
- Tuition reimbursement
- Employee referral bonus program
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the remote work policy for this role?
This role is based at the McLean, Virginia headquarters and requires on-site attendance 5 days a week.
What is the salary range for the AI Security Engineer position?
The base salary range is a good faith and reasonable estimate of $100,000 to $200,000 USD at the time of posting, with actual compensation depending on factors like relevant work experience and qualifications.
What tools and frameworks are used in this role?
Engineers work with languages such as Python, Go, Scala, or Java, alongside orchestration tools and vector databases like LangChain, LlamaIndex, Pinecone, Qdrant, and various SIEM, EDR, and XDR stacks.
What growth and development opportunities are available?
Appian provides a leadership program tailored for new and aspiring managers, a comprehensive library of specialized department training through Appian University, skills based training, and tuition reimbursement.
The application is on the official Appian Corporation careers page.
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