AI Security Engineer

About the role

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you'll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.

Location: McLean, VA | On-site (5 days/week)

Are you ready to build the security systems that protect a global enterprise automation platform from modern cyber threats? As a Security Engineer, you will design and implement advanced detection technologies to shield our critical infrastructure.

The Opportunity

At Appian, we believe our greatest innovations spring from in-person collaboration. Joining our team at our McLean headquarters means you will work alongside elite security architects in a high-velocity environment that prioritizes your professional growth. This role offers an unparalleled launchpad to transition academic knowledge into real-world impact, giving you direct ownership over intrusion detection capabilities and cloud-based defense strategies for our Enterprise-Grade Orchestration ecosystem.

What You'll Do

• Build & Deploy Agents: Design, test, and deploy autonomous and semi-autonomous AI agents that integrate natively with our enterprise security stack (SIEM, EDR, XDR, and Threat Intel feeds).
• Code the Playbooks: Translate traditional, human-centric SOC playbooks and analyst workflows into deterministic and heuristic agentic pipelines (using DAGs and multi-agent routing).
• Optimize RAG Pipelines: Design, optimize, and maintain production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workflows to inject real-time security context, network topology, and historical incident logs into agent prompts.
• LLM Performance Engineering: Continuously evaluate, benchmark, and optimize LLM performance, context window utilization, latency, and cost-efficiency across various models (OSS and commercial).
• Design Human-in-the-Loop (HITL): Collaborate deeply with Tier 3 Analysts and Threat Hunters to engineer seamless HITL handoff mechanisms, ensuring agents safely escalate complex anomalies to humans.
• Secure the AI: Implement robust security boundaries around our LLM architecture, mitigating risks like prompt injection, data poisoning, model tool-abuse, and addressing the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 2 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, OR a Master's degree in a related field plus at least 1 year of experience.
• Experience: At least 2 years of experience programming with Python, Go, Scala, or Java.
• You are a Builder First: You take immense pride in shipping clean, production-grade, asynchronous code. You care about system architecture as much as model accuracy.
• Security-Curious or Security-Hardened: You bridge the gap between AI research and practical cybersecurity. You understand that an AI agent is only as good as the guardrails keeping it from deleting a production server during a false positive.
• Thrives in Ambiguity: Building an Agentic SOC means charting unknown territory. You love breaking down abstract, high-level security problems into concrete, execution-ready AI systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• 3 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure).
• Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services, specifically within the domains of security operations or threat intelligence.

Additional information

Hands-on experience building multi-agent or complex orchestration systems using tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI, or Semantic Kernel.

Proven experience working with production Vector Databases (e.g., Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus, or Weaviate) for semantic chunking, embedding generation, and metadata filtering.

• Experience deploying and scaling AI workloads in containerized cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP using Kubernetes/EKS/AKS).

Pay and benefits

The base salary range represents a good faith and reasonable estimate of the range at the time of posting. Actual compensation will be dependent on a number of factors including, but not limited to, the candidate's relevant work experience, qualifications, internal peer equity, and market and business conditions that exist when extending an offer. A discretionary bonus may be awarded in recognition of individual and company performance.

In addition, Appian provides generous benefits offerings that include a 401(k) plan with company match, flexible time off, paid parental leave, medical, dental, and vision plans, life insurance, disability insurance, wellness programs, flexible spending accounts, health savings account contributions, an employee referral bonus program, and learning and development resources. Certain positions may be eligible for equity awards.

Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation, commission, bonus, or benefit plans.

Base Salary Range $100,000—$200,000 USD

Tools and Resources

• Training and Development: During onboarding, we focus on equipping new hires with the skills and knowledge for success through department-specific training. Continuous learning is a central focus at Appian, with dedicated mentorship and the First-Friend program being widely utilized resources for new hires.
• Growth Opportunities: Appian provides a diverse array of growth and development opportunities, including our leadership program tailored for new and aspiring managers, a comprehensive library of specialized department training through Appian University, skills based training, and tuition reimbursement for those aiming to advance their education. This commitment ensures that employees have access to a holistic range of development opportunities.
• Community: We'll immerse you into our community rooted in respect starting on day one. Appian fosters inclusivity through our 8 employee-led affinity groups. These groups help employees build stronger internal and external networks by planning social, educational, and outreach activities to connect with Appianites and larger initiatives throughout the company.

Benefits

Appian offers a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your health, wellbeing, and financial future. Benefits may include health coverage, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with free mental health support, life and disability insurance, an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP), a retirement/pension plan, wellness dollars, tuition reimbursement, family-forming benefits and more. Benefits vary by country-please ask your Talent Acquisition contact for details specific to the location you are applying to.