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CuspAI is a frontier AI company using machine learning to accelerate materials discovery for energy, clean water, compute, and carbon capture. The company's founding team comprises world-class researchers in AI, chemistry, and engineering, and they are building an AI-powered "search engine" for next-generation materials.
As an early Security Engineer, you will architect and build automated security pipelines and AI-specific guardrails to protect the company's proprietary materials discovery platform, frontier models, and research data. You will establish a "shift-left" security culture where security is embedded as a fundamental product feature rather than a manual blocker.
Key responsibilities include:
**AI-Specific Security & IP Protection:**
- Secure the end-to-end ML lifecycle with defenses against data poisoning and model weight theft
- Design and deploy prompt injection defenses and runtime firewalls for LLM interfaces
- Implement AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) to monitor self-hosted models, training datasets, and proprietary endpoints
**Cloud Security, CI/CD & DevSecOps:**
- Integrate automated security guardrails into CI/CD workflows (secret scanning, API exposure checks, software composition analysis)
- Codify security policies using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi) for compliance with GDPR, SOC2, and other standards
- Manage secrets and vulnerability patching for containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Design least-privilege IAM controls to isolate sensitive training data and research workloads
**Interdisciplinary Collaboration & Security Culture:**
- Lead incident response efforts by monitoring production logs and collaborating with AI researchers
- Empower engineering teams with security tools (IDE scanning, pre-commit hooks)
- Act as a security educator, fostering shared responsibility across AI, chemistry, and engineering teams
- Partner with researchers and engineers to translate security requirements into practical workflows
The role is based in Cambridge with flexibility to work from London, Amsterdam, or Berlin offices, with an expectation of three days per week in-office. Regular travel across Europe and globally may be required for collaboration and project work. Initial onboarding will involve spending several weeks in the Cambridge/London office.
**Requirements:**
- 3+ years of experience in DevSecOps, Cloud Security, or Site Reliability Engineering, preferably in a fast-paced startup or AI-centric company
- Proven experience building and securing CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins)
- Strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi) and securing cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- Deep understanding of container security and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Practical knowledge of security frameworks and implementation without slowing development cycles
- Motivation by the mission of using AI for planetary-scale impact and understanding the stakes of securing deep tech IP
**Bonus qualifications:**
- Direct experience with AI-specific security tools or defending against LLM vulnerabilities (OWASP Top 10 for LLMs)
- Experience with AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) tools
- Relevant certifications (AWS Certified Security, CSEP, OSCP)
- Background or interest in materials science, chemistry, or AI and physical sciences intersection
