SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
OpenAI's Applied AI Engineering team is seeking a hands-on Applied AI Engineer to help government and national security customers apply frontier AI to critical cyber missions. You will work directly with cyber operators, security researchers, and engineering teams to identify high-value AI applications, build and evaluate AI-powered tools and agentic workflows, and move solutions from prototype into secure operational use.
In this role, you will own hands-on implementation for government cyber use cases, working alongside account-aligned technical owners, customer engineers, and security practitioners. You'll lead technical discovery to identify high-value AI applications across authorized red teaming, adversary emulation, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, detection engineering, incident response, and malware analysis. You'll build secure cyber prototypes and agentic workflows using OpenAI models, APIs, and integrations with customers' security tools and infrastructure.
You'll design and run evaluations that measure technical correctness, security impact, reliability, and operator effectiveness, using results to guide implementation and deployment decisions. You'll partner with government security leaders, mission teams, and OpenAI's Security and Product teams to establish success criteria, deliver measurable outcomes, and complete operational handoffs. You'll also contribute reusable code, examples, and technical guidance to open-source developer and enterprise resources, and translate customer deployments and operational insights into actionable feedback for Product, Engineering, and Research teams.
This role requires frequent on-site engagement at customer and partner facilities across the DMV area, including classified environments.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Active TS/SCI clearance and current, active full-scope polygraph (required)
- 7+ years of hands-on technical experience in cybersecurity, cyber operations, or security-focused software engineering, including direct work with government customers or national security mission teams
- Practical experience across offensive and defensive cybersecurity, with depth in red teaming, adversary emulation, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, or detection engineering (experience supporting NSA or comparable national security cyber missions strongly preferred)
- Demonstrated ability to write code, integrate security tools, and build, test, and deploy cyber capabilities or security automation with measurable technical and mission outcomes
- Understanding of secure network and cloud architecture, identity and least privilege, restricted operating environments, application-security toolchains, authorization boundaries, and human-approved remediation
- Hands-on programming experience with Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Go; ability to integrate APIs, agents, command-line tools, and security platforms into reliable workflows (relevant toolchains: GitHub, CodeQL, Snyk, Semgrep, SARIF, Jira, CI/CD systems)
- Clear communication with cyber practitioners, engineers, senior leaders, and nontechnical stakeholders
- Ability to own problems end-to-end and learn unfamiliar tools, systems, or mission requirements as needed
- Collaborative approach with humility and willingness to share knowledge
- Ability to drive multiple concurrent projects with urgency, sound judgment, and clear prioritization while maintaining high technical execution standards
