Agentic AI Security Engineer

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI); United States; On-site; USD 149,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Retirement plans

Time off

Wellness programs

Job summary

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Ashburn, VA seeks an Agentic AI Security Engineer to research, develop, deploy, and operate the safety stack for agent‑driven AI on OpenShift and an HPC cluster. You’ll implement sandboxing, isolation, policy enforcement, and audit logging across tool calls and model execution.

Join early in the architecture decisions, collaborate with scientists and industry partners, and help open‑source this work.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience operating LLM agents and handling failures.
• Deep sandbox/container-security expertise and ability to move into agentic domain.
• Linux and Kubernetes/OpenShift isolation depth with understanding containerization vs sandboxing.
• Evidence over certifications: open-source contributions, publications, or discussable production systems.
• Minimum 5 years in security, systems/SRE, or ML systems engineering.

Responsibilities

• Research, develop, deploy, operate, and analyze the safety stack for agentic AI at Janelia: sandboxing, isolation, and policy enforcement.
• Implement guardrails, judge models, and human approval gates for agent tool calls.
• Establish observability with audit logging, real-time monitoring, and post-incident analysis.
• Collaborate on architecture decisions and contribute to open-source and publications.
• Work with a large GPU cluster and collaborations with industry partners to advance safety practices.

Skills

LLM agents

Kubernetes/OpenShift

Sandboxing

Security engineering

Tools

OpenShift

Kubernetes

Sandboxing tools

Job description

Primary Work Address:

19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA, 20147

AI@HHMI at Janelia integrates AI agents across the research process. These tools write and execute code, optimize experimental and model parameters, and drive instruments.

Letting AI agents act on shared research infrastructure requires serious safety engineering. The relevant failure mode is usually not a malicious attacker but a capable, misdirected tool running with legitimate user permissions at machine speed: hallucinated commands, instructions hijacked by retrieved content, runaway loops, sandbox escapes.

We are hiring the engineer who owns this problem.

The role

You will research, develop, deploy, operate, and analyze the safety stack for agentic AI at Janelia: Sandboxing. Hardened, reproducible execution environments for agent code (kernel- and VM-level isolation, network egress control) on our OpenShift platform and HPC cluster, validated by adversarial testing.

Guardrails. Policy enforcement on agent inputs, outputs, and tool calls; judge models; human approval gates; independent safeguard services that sessions can be routed through, individually or chained.

Observability. Attributable audit logging, full-trace capture, real-time monitoring, and post-incident analysis of agent sessions.

You will join early enough to make the foundational architecture decisions, and you will operate what you design. We expect and support open-sourcing and publishing this work.

The environment

A large NVIDIA GPU cluster (B300/H200/H100 class) running self-hosted open-weight models and frontier commercial models; collaborations with industry (Anthropic and Google); scientists across biology, physics, and ML as your users; the long-term stability of a philanthropy-funded research institute.

What we look for

Hands-on experience operating LLM agents and dealing with their failures, or deep sandbox/container-security expertise with clear ability to move into the agentic domain.

Linux and Kubernetes/OpenShift isolation depth, including a precise understanding of the difference between containerization and sandboxing.

Working knowledge of agent architectures: tool-calling protocols (e.g., MCP), approval gates, judge models, guardrail frameworks, and the limits of each.

Evidence over certifications: open-source contributions, publications or technical writing, disclosed findings, or production systems you can discuss in depth.

Minimum 5 years in security, systems/SRE, or ML systems engineering.

Physical Requirements

Remaining in a normal seated or standing position for extended periods of time; reaching and grasping by extending hand(s) or arm(s); dexterity to manipulate objects with fingers, for example using a keyboard; communication skills using the spoken word; ability to see and hear within normal parameters; ability to move about workspace.

The position requires mobility, including the ability to move materials weighing up to several pounds (such as a laptop computer or tablet).

Persons with disabilities may be able to perform the essential duties of this position with reasonable accommodation. Requests for reasonable accommodation will be evaluated on an individual basis.

Please Note: This job description sets forth the job’s principal duties, responsibilities, and requirements; it should not be construed as an exhaustive statement, however. Unless they begin with the word “may,” the Essential Duties and Responsibilities described above are “essential functions” of the job, as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Hiring Pay Range

Agentic AI Security Engineer: $149,084.80 - $186,356.00
Agentic AI Security Senior Engineer: $181,143.20 - $226,429.00
Agentic AI Security Principal Engineer: $210,803.20 - $263,504.00
Pay Type: Salary
The posted range reflects HHMI’s good faith estimate of the anticipated hiring salary range for this role at the time of posting. Actual hiring compensation is determined by a candidate’s qualifications, experience, and internal equity.

Compensation and Benefits

Our employees are compensated from a total rewards perspective in many ways for their contributions to our mission, including competitive pay, exceptional health benefits, retirement plans, time off, and a range of recognition and wellness programs.

Visit our Benefits at HHMI site to learn more.

HHMI is an Equal Opportunity Employer

We use E-Verify to confirm the identity and employment eligibility of all new hires.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an independent, ever-evolving philanthropy that supports basic biomedical scientists and educators with the potential for transformative impact. We make long-term investments in people, not just projects, because we believe in the power of individuals to make breakthroughs over time.

Why HHMI

To move science forward we need a diverse collection of talents, expertise, and backgrounds in scientific research and science education, as well as communications, finance, human resources, information technology, investments, law, and operations. At HHMI, we encourage collaborative and results-driven working styles and offer an adaptable environment where employees can do their best work. What makes us strong is the diversity of our perspectives. We work to promote a culture of inclusion in our work environments and across the greater scientific community.

To find more information about us and the steps we're taking to make HHMI a more inclusive organization, visit our About Us page.

Contact us at [e-mail] if you require an accommodation related to completing the job application. All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.

Applicants have rights under federal employment laws. For more information about your rights as an applicant, please review these posters: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Know Your Rights, and Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA).