Security Engineer

Academic Key; Cambridge; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Travel opportunities

Job summary

CuspAI is building with a mission to secure its frontier AI platform in Cambridge, UK, focusing on end-to-end security for machine learning lifecycles and protecting proprietary models and data. The role demands security-centric thinking as we scale our research workflow and deploy guardrails across development and deployment.

You will architect shift-left security practices, integrate automated protections into CI/CD, and collaborate with AI researchers to maintain fast innovation while keeping

Qualifications

• 3+ years in a DevSecOps, Cloud Security, or SRE role in a fast-paced startup or AI-centric company.
• Proven experience building and securing CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins).
• Strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi) and securing cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Deep understanding of container security and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Practical knowledge of security frameworks and how to implement them without slowing down development cycles.

Responsibilities

• Secure end-to-end ML lifecycle and defend against data poisoning to protect proprietary models and weights.
• Design and deploy prompt injection defenses and runtime firewalls for LLM interfaces.
• Implement AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) to monitor self-hosted models, datasets, and endpoints.

Skills

DevSecOps

Cloud Security

CI/CD Pipelines

Infrastructure as Code

Docker/Kubernetes

Security Frameworks

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Job description

Security Engineer

Cuspai · Cambridge, UK

Abroad Cambridge, UK Full Time Link validated

About CuspAI CuspAI is the frontier AI company on a mission to solve the breakthrough materials needed to power human progress. While nature took billions of years to perfect molecules, we are harnessing AI to unlock trillion-dollar materials breakthroughs in months, not millennia. Our founding team is the most cited in the world, comprised of world‑class researchers in AI, chemistry and engineering. We are working on some of the hardest and most important challenges including energy, clean water, the future of compute, and carbon capture, and this is just the start of what our 'search engine' for next-generation materials will unlock. We invite you to be part of a diverse, innovative team at the intersection of AI and materials science, working to create impactful partnerships that drive innovation, scalability, and industry collaboration. This work matters. Your work matters. We’re on the cusp of the on-demand materials era. Join us.

The Role Due to our rapid growth and the sensitivity of our proprietary materials discovery platform, we are seeking a Security Engineer to ensure our innovation happens at speed without compromising the safety of our IP or our users.

Your Impact In this role you will be building the automated security pipelines and AI‑specific guardrails that protect our frontier models and research data, which is critical for maintaining the integrity of our materials discovery engine and the trust of our global partners. As an early security hire, you won't be a manual blocker; instead, you will architect a "shift-left" culture where security is a fundamental product feature. Your work ensures that as we scale our search for next-generation materials, our underlying infrastructure and world‑class IP remain safely locked down.

What You Will Do

AI‑Specific Security & IP Protection

• Secure the end‑to‑end ML lifecycle, implementing defenses against data poisoning and protecting our proprietary model weights from theft.
• Design and deploy prompt injection defenses and runtime firewalls to prevent unauthorized manipulation of our LLM interfaces.
• Implement AI Security Posture Management (AI‑SPM) to monitor and catalog self‑hosted models, internal training datasets, and proprietary endpoints.

Cloud Security, CI/CD & Core DevSecOps

• Weave automated security "guardrails" directly into our CI/CD workflows, including secret scanning, API exposure checks, and software composition analysis (SCA).
• Codify security policies using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), ensuring all cloud resources are automatically compliant with global standards (e.g. GDPR, SOC2).
• Manage secrets and vulnerability patching for containerized environments (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes) to ensure our research environment is resilient.
• Design strict, least‑privilege Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls to isolate sensitive training data and research workloads.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration & Security Culture

• Lead incident response efforts by monitoring production logs for anomalies and collaborating with AI Researchers to deploy rapid fixes.
• Empower the engineering team to own security by providing tools for local IDE security scanning and pre‑commit hooks.
• Act as a security educator, cultivating a culture of shared responsibility across the AI, chemistry, and engineering teams.
• Partner with researchers, chemists, and engineers to translate security requirements into practical workflows that support rather than slow down scientific work.

Must Have Skills and Qualifications:

• You are motivated by the mission of using AI for planetary‑scale impact and understand the high stakes of securing "deep tech" intellectual property.
• 3+ years of experience in a DevSecOps, Cloud Security, or Site Reliability Engineering role, preferably within a fast‑paced startup or AI‑centric company.
• Proven experience building and securing CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins).
• Strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform, Pulumi) and securing cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Deep understanding of container security and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Practical knowledge of security frameworks and how to implement them without slowing down development cycles.

Bonus Points (But Not Critical):

• Direct experience with AI‑specific security tools or defending against LLM‑specific vulnerabilities (OWASP Top 10 for LLMs).
• Experience with AI Security Posture Management (AI‑SPM) tools.
• Relevant certifications such as AWS Certified Security, CSEP, or OSCP.
• A background or personal interest in materials science, chemistry, or the intersection of AI and physical sciences.

Additional Considerations

This role could be based in our Cambridge, London, Amsterdam or Berlin offices, with the expectation of being in the office three days per week. Additionally, there may be regular travel required to other locations for collaboration and project work. As part of your onboarding, you will be expected to spend at least a few weeks in