Entry-Level AI Security Engineer

Cybersecurity Jobs; North Carolina; On-site; USD 95,000 - 157,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid time off

401(k) plan with Cisco matching

Sick time

Job summary

Cisco is seeking an early-career Security Engineer I to help advance AI security research and engineering at Cisco in the Research Triangle Park, NC area. This onsite role supports security assignments, testing, validation, and threat modeling for AI-native features under Cisco SDLC and responsible-AI practices.

You will operate with defined scope, contributing evidence and documentation to help teams identify and reduce risk in secure software delivery and AI-enabled workflows.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree completed within the past 3 years or expected to be completed within the next 12 months.
• Qualifying education and work experience in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Foundational knowledge of security engineering, software development, AI/ML, or applied research gained through education, internships, projects, or equivalent practical work.
• Working knowledge of Python and the ability to develop and test basic scripts.

Responsibilities

• Execute routine, well-defined security engineering assignments using established practices and procedures with detailed guidance.
• Support vulnerability and risk assessments, security code reviews, validation testing, remediation, and security-hardening activities.
• Assist with threat models for AI-native features including RAG, tool use, agentic workflows, and MCP integrations, covering risks such as prompt injection, data poisoning, excessive agency, and supply-chain threats.
• Run defined adversarial tests and evaluations, record evidence and results, and elevate complex or unexpected findings.
• Contribute basic Python tooling, evaluation cases, guardrails, and automated security checks under review, including integration into Secure Development Lifecycle and CI/CD workflows.
• Support data-protection and human-oversight controls for AI systems, including sensitive-data handling, review, approval, and accountability.
• Contribute to threat research, reusable patterns, and technical write-ups; communicate findings and participate in security design reviews and incident-response activities.

Skills

Python

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, IT, or related field

Tools

RAG

MCP

OWASP LLM/Agentic Top 10

MITRE ATLAS

NIST AI RMF

Cisco AI Defense

NVIDIA’s Garak

Job description

Cisco is seeking an early-career Security Engineer I to help advance AI security research and engineering at Cisco in the Research Triangle Park, NC area. This onsite role supports security assignments, testing, validation, and threat modeling for AI-native features under Cisco SDLC and responsible-AI practices.

You will operate with defined scope, contributing evidence and documentation to help teams identify and reduce risk in secure software delivery and AI-enabled workflows.