Applied AI Engineer: Government Cyber & National Security

Alfie; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 211,000 - 302,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a hands-on Applied AI Engineer with deep cybersecurity experience to support government and national security missions. You will design architectures with OpenAI models, work with security tooling, and deliver secure AI-enabled capabilities for mission-critical operations.

You will be on-site in the DMV area, collaborating with cyber operators, security researchers, and engineering teams to move solutions from prototype to secure production.

Qualifications

• Active TS/SCI clearance and current full-scope polygraph.
• 7+ years hands-on experience in cybersecurity, cyber operations, or security-focused software engineering with government customers.
• Experience across offensive and defensive cybersecurity domains including red teaming, adversary emulation, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, or detection engineering.

Responsibilities

• Work on-site with government clients in the DMV area.
• Lead discovery to identify high-value AI applications for cyber use cases.
• Build secure cyber prototypes and agentic workflows using OpenAI models and integrations.
• Design evaluations to measure correctness, security impact, reliability, and operator effectiveness.
• Collaborate with government security leaders, mission teams, and product teams to deliver measurable outcomes.
• Contribute reusable code and technical guidance to OpenAI resources.
• Scale the Applied AI Engineering function by sharing knowledge and patterns.

Skills

Cybersecurity

Red teaming

Adversary emulation

Vulnerability research

Reverse engineering

Threat hunting

Security tooling

Tools

OpenAI APIs

Security tooling

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a hands-on Applied AI Engineer with deep cybersecurity experience to support government and national security missions. You will design architectures with OpenAI models, work with security tooling, and deliver secure AI-enabled capabilities for mission-critical operations.

You will be on-site in the DMV area, collaborating with cyber operators, security researchers, and engineering teams to move solutions from prototype to secure production.