AI Security Research & Red Team Engineer

CloudFlare; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Cloudflare is seeking an AI Security Research & Red Team Engineer to join the Red Team within the Security Threat Detection, Response and Emulation organization. The role focuses on driving security research, adversary simulations, and improvements across AI, agents, and LLMs.

You will collaborate with SIRT, Threat Detection, Product Engineering, and GRC to bridge adversary simulations with defenses, mentor teams, and report risk-focused insights to leadership.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in offensive security, application security or related field.
• Deep knowledge of AI, LLMs, and AI-related attack vectors.
• Strong background in manual pen testing, exploit development, or cloud security.
• Experience mapping coverage with MITRE ATT&CK to defensive telemetry.
• Ability to explain complex exploits to non-technical stakeholders.
• Familiarity with BAS tools and payload delivery frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Conduct AI security and vulnerability research focusing on AI and LLM usage.
• Test agentic implementations and R&D to define detection requirements and guidance.
• Perform adversary simulations and red team operations on Cloudflare’s infrastructure and products.
• Develop a rigorous framework to test security detections (WAF, EDR, SIEM) against TTPs.
• Foster purple-teaming with the blue team and translate findings into defensive improvements.
• Mentor and lead technical teams, promoting curiosity and ethical hacking.

Skills

Offensive security

AI/LLMs

Penetration testing

Cloud security

MITRE ATT&CK

Technical leadership

Communication

Tools

BAS tools

Custom frameworks

Payload delivery

Job description

AI Security Research & Red Team Engineer

Hybrid

About Us

At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

At Cloudflare, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a \"normalized\" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.

The Role:

We are seeking a highly skilled AI Security Research & Red team engineerto join our Red Team within the Security Threat Detection, Response and Emulation organization. This is a critical role that will be at the forefront of protecting our company and customers from malicious threats. You will be responsible for driving security research, exercises, and activities that emulate real world attackers and attacks to drive improvements in Cloudflare’s security posture focusing on AI, Agents, harnesses and LLM’s.

Key Responsibilities:

• AI Security and Vulnerability Research: Stay current with emerging threats and perform deep-dive research to identify AI-specific vulnerabilities and risks in addition to general vulnerabilities across Cloudflare’s products and services.
• Agentic testing and adoption: As a core function, identifying AI-related attack surfaces through rigorous testing of agentic implementations and LLM usage which will help define requirements and implementation guidance while proactively.
• Adversary Simulation: Execution of full-chain red team operations targeting Cloudflare’s global infrastructure, corporate networks, and product ecosystems.
• Efficacy Testing: Establish a rigorous framework for testing \"Security Efficacy\"—measuring exactly how well our WAF, EDR, and SIEM detections perform against known TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures).
• Purple Teaming: Foster a highly collaborative relationship with the Blue Team (Detection & Response) to ensure findings are translated into immediate defensive improvements.
• Mentorship & Growth: Be a technical leader, providing technical expertise while fostering a culture of curiosity, ethical hacking and partnering to improve Cloudflare’s security posture.
• Executive Reporting: Translate complex technical exploits into risk-based narratives for leadership, helping prioritize engineering resources where they matter most.

Partnerships

• Security Incident Response Team (SIRT): You will act as the \"sparring partner\" for SIRT. By conducting unannounced exercises, you help them refine their playbooks, test their on-call rotations, and ensure their forensic tooling is effective under pressure.
• Threat Detection & Threat Engineering: You will partner closely with these teams to bridge the gap between adversary simulation and defensive coverage. You will proactively identify detection gaps, lead the development of new detection logic, and establish rigorous validation frameworks to test and tune detections against emerging TTPs.
• Product Engineering/SRE: We operate as \"Customer Zero\" of our own products, your red teaming findings will drive resilience in processes and implementations, ultimately making Cloudflare and its customers more secure.
• Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC): You will bridge the gap between \"paper security\" and \"technical reality.\" By providing empirical evidence of control effectiveness, you help GRC move away from manual audits and toward continuous, automated compliance validation.

Required Qualifications:

• Experience: 4+ years in offensive security, application security or other relevant field
• Deep knowledge: AI, Coding agents, LLMs, prompt engineering, AI-related attack vectors (e.g., prompt injection, jailbreaking), and Agentic concepts all for use in the red team but also testing Cloudflare uses.
• Technical Roots: A strong background in manual penetration testing, exploit development, or cloud security (AWS/GCP/Bare Metal).
• Operational Mindset: Experience using the MITRE ATT&CK framework to map coverage and identify \"blind spots\" in defensive telemetry.
• Communication Skills: The ability to explain a complex \"0-day\" exploit to a non-technical stakeholder while maintaining the respect of a deep-dive engineering team.
• Tooling Familiarity: Knowledge of automated breach and attack simulation (BAS) tools, as well as custom-built frameworks for payload delivery and C2 infrastructure.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For New York based hires: Estimated annual salary of $166,000 - $208,000.

Equity

This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.

Project Galileo

Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost.

Athenian Project

In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.

1.1.1.1

We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Here’s the deal - we don’t store client IP addresses never, ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.

Sound like something you’d like to be a part of? We’d love to hear from you!

Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Please note that any offer of employment may be conditioned on your authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export laws without sponsorship for an export license.

Cloudflare is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their, or any other person's, perceived or actual race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law. We are an AA/Veterans/Disabled Employer.

Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job. Examples of reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to, changing the application process, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using