AI Engineer

Proofpoint; India; On-site; INR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Proofpoint is hiring an AI Engineer (Agent Systems) to design and deploy autonomous AI agents and multi‑agent security workflows. The role focuses on robust, scalable agentic systems, optimized for latency, cost, and reliability, in production environments.

You will collaborate with researchers and engineers to implement memory, tool usage, and planning in agent architectures while reducing hallucinations and failures. Hyderabad/Athens/Sunnyvale locations.

Qualifications

• 2+ years experience in AI Engineering/ML Engineering.
• Strong experience building agentic AI systems or LLM-powered apps in production.
• Experience designing multi-step, tool-using agents (LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI).
• Strong Python engineering skills.
• Experience with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) and Hugging Face.
• Experience implementing RAG pipelines, vector stores, and semantic retrieval.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, evaluate, and deploy autonomous AI agents for security use cases.
• Develop cost-efficient agentic pipelines optimized for latency and reliability.
• Create orchestration frameworks for LLM-based agents with memory and planning.
• Experiment with ReAct, chain-of-thought prompting, and agent memory architectures.
• Improve agent robustness and reduce hallucinations and unnecessary LLM calls.
• Collaborate with researchers to translate detection logic into agent workflows.

Job description

About Us

Proofpoint is a global leader in human- and agent-centric cybersecurity. We protect how people, data, and AI agents connect across email, cloud, and collaboration tools. Over 80 of the Fortune 100, 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations trust Proofpoint to stop threats, prevent data loss, and build resilience across their people and AI workflows. Our mission is simple: safeguard the digital world and empower people to work securely and confidently. Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people.

How We Work

At Proofpoint you’ll be part of a global team that breaks barriers to redefine cybersecurity guided by our BRAVE core values: Bold in how we dream and innovate Responsive to feedback, challenges and opportunities Accountable for results and best in class outcomes Visionary in future focused problem-solving Exceptional in execution and impact.

Corporate Overview

Proofpoint is a leading cybersecurity company protecting organizations’ greatest assets and biggest risks: vulnerabilities in people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber-attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 1000, rely on Proofpoint for people‑centric security and compliance solutions mitigating their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web. We are singularly devoted to helping our customers protect their greatest assets and biggest security risk: their people. That’s why we’re a leader in next‑generation cybersecurity. Protection Starts with People. Proofpoint.

Job Title & Location

AI Engineer (Agent Systems)

Hyderabad, A.P., India; Athens, Greece; Sunnyvale, CA, USA

Role Overview

Proofpoint is building the next generation of AI-powered security systems to protect organizations from rapidly evolving threats. We are looking for a highly skilled AI Engineer to help design and build production‑grade agentic AI systems that power intelligent security workflows at scale. This role is focused on developing and deploying autonomous agents that are reliable, composable, cost‑efficient, and capable of operating in real‑world, high‑throughput security environments. You will work closely with security researchers, platform engineers, and product teams to turn cutting‑edge agentic AI techniques into robust, automated detection and response capabilities used in production.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, evaluate, and deploy autonomous AI agents and multi-agent systems for security detection and response use cases
• Build reliable, cost-efficient agentic pipelines optimized for latency, accuracy, operational stability, and tool-use fidelity
• Develop orchestration frameworks for LLM-based agents with tool use, memory, planning, and multi-step reasoning
• Experiment with techniques such as ReAct, chain-of-thought prompting, structured output, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic memory architectures
• Improve agent task completion quality while minimizing hallucination, failure modes, and unnecessary LLM calls
• Build scalable agent infrastructure and production‑grade agentic workflow pipelines
• Partner with security researchers to transform detection and triage logic into agent-powered automated workflows
• Measure and optimize agent performance across task success rate, cost-per-run, latency, and reliability
• Contribute to evaluation frameworks, ground-truth datasets, and agent benchmarking workflows
• Monitor production agents and continuously improve robustness, observability, and failure recovery

Required Qualifications

• E xperience 2+ years of experience in AI Engineering, Applied AI, or ML Engineering
• Strong experience building and deploying agentic AI systems or LLM-powered applications in production
• Experience designing multi-step, tool-using agents using frameworks such as LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or custom orchestration
• Strong Python engineering skills
• Experience working with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) and open-source models via Hugging Face or similar
• Experience implementing RAG pipelines, vector stores, and semantic retrieval systems (e.g., FAISS, Weaviate, Pinecone, pgvector)
• Solid understanding of agent evaluation, prompt engineering, structured output parsing, and tool/function calling
• Experience deploying agentic systems in cloud or containerized environments
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and production mindset

Nice to Have

• Experience with security domains such as email security, threat intelligence, phishing detection, or SOC workflows
• Familiarity with fine-tuning or adapting LLMs for domain-specific agent behaviors
• Experience with observability tooling for LLM systems (e.g., LangSmith, Helicone, OpenTelemetry for AI)
• Knowledge of agent safety, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop design patterns
• Exposure to agentic memory systems (episodic, semantic, working memory) and long-horizon task planning

Why Proofpoint

Why Proofpoint Protecting people is at the heart of our award‑winning lineup of cybersecurity solutions, and the people who work here are the key to our success. We’re a customer‑focused and a driven‑to‑win organization with leading‑edge products. We are an inclusive, diverse, multinational company that believes in culture fit, but more importantly ‘culture‑add’, and we strongly encourage people from all walks of life to apply. We believe in hiring the best and the brightest to help cultivate our culture of collaboration and appreciation.

Here are just a few reasons you’ll love working with us:

• Competitive compensation
• Comprehensive benefits
• Career success on your terms
• Flexible work environment
• Annual wellness and community outreach days
• Always on recognition for your contributions
• Global collaboration and networking opportunities

Our Culture

Our culture is rooted in values that inspire belonging, empower purpose and drive success‑every day, for everyone.

Proofpoint is an equal opportunity employer, we hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status or disability.

We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.

We strongly encourage people from all walks of life to apply.

If you need accommodation during the application or interview process, please reach out to [e-mail].

Proofpoint has been honored with six Best Places to Work Awards in 2024 by workplace culture leader Comparably, including Best Company Career Growth, Best Company Outlook, Best Global Culture, Best Engineering Teams, Best Sales Teams, and Best HR Teams.

We are the leader in human-centric cybersecurity. Half a million customers, including 87 of the Fortune 100, rely on Proofpoint to protect their organizations.

We’re driven by a mission to stay ahead of bad actors and safeguard the digital world.

Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people.

Our BRAVE Values

At Proofpoint, we are BRAVE in everything we do, and our values aren’t just words—they shape how we work, collaborate, and grow. We seek people who are bold enough to challenge the status quo, responsive in the face of ever‑evolving threats, and accountable for delivering real impact. We value those with a visionary mindset who anticipate what’s next and push cybersecurity forward, and we celebrate exceptional execution that ensures we continue to defend data and protect people.

We’re building the future of human-centric cybersecurity, and that future belongs to all of us. We take ownership, move fast, and hold ourselves accountable—because that’s what it takes to stay ahead. And we do it together, winning as one. Be empowered to reach your full potential through meaningful challenges and personalized support—designed around you and your goals. Whether you’re growing as a leader or leveling up from great to exceptional as an individual contributor, we’re here to help you get there.