Founding AI Engineer — AI Cyber-Security Start-Up

ManticoreAI; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 720,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI Cyber-Security start-up is looking for a Founding AI Engineer. This role will involve architecting cutting-edge AI systems for pen-testing automation, combining your expertise in AI, cybersecurity, and programming. You will influence significant technological development and help shape the company's future as it evolves into a key player in the industry.

Benefits

Founding-Team Equity

Remote-First Flexibility

High Autonomy & Impact

Hardware & Learning Budget

Mission-Driven Culture

Qualifications

• Experience in developing AI agents or autonomous coding pipelines.
• Proficient in Python, especially in asynchronous programming and clean architecture.
• Knowledge of penetration testing and cybersecurity frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Design and architect AI agents for cybersecurity solutions.
• Integrate large-language models and optimize for performance.
• Collaborate with red-teamers to validate and enhance agent logic.

Skills

AI Agent Design

Python Programming

Pentesting Skills

Cybersecurity Expertise

Systems Engineering

Collaboration

Startup Mindset

Job description

Founding AI Engineer — AI Cyber-Security Start-Up

Founding AI Engineer — AI Cyber-Security Start-Up

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Founder & CEO @ ManticoreAI | AI-Driven Pen-Testing in Minutes | Red-Team Veteran | Cybersecurity Speaker

Who We Are

We’re a venture backed company on a mission to reinvent offensive security. Our platform pairs proprietary large-language-model (LLM) agents with classic tooling to autonomously plan and execute penetration tests for global enterprises. Early pilots with tier-one enterprises prove the tech works; now we’re expanding our founding team to turn a robust prototype into an industry-defining SaaS.

Why This Role Matters

LLMs alone don’t break systems—agents that can reason, plan, and safely wield real-world security tools do. You will architect those agents: the brains that discover vulnerabilities, chain exploits, and generate expert-grade reports at machine speed. Your work will sit at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research, hardcore system programming, and practical red-team tradecraft.

What You’ll Own

• Agent Architecture & Orchestration – Design multi-step reasoning, planning, memory, and reflection loops in Python; evaluate or extend frameworks such as LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, or roll your own when needed.
• LLM Integration & Optimization – Combine API-based and on-prem models, fine-tune on pentest data, and build robust fall-backs for cost, latency, and privacy.
• Tool Control Layer – Orchestrate Nmap, Metasploit, Burp, custom exploits, and scanners; normalize and interpret their output for iterative agent reasoning.
• Safety & Ethics Guard-Rails – Enforce target scope, command whitelists, sandboxing, resource quotas, and kill-switches to ensure responsible, deterministic operation.
• System Engineering – Build secure execution sandboxes (Docker/Firecracker), optimize async IO, and scale inference workloads across AWS & Cloudflare Workers.
• Collaboration & Validation – Work hand-in-hand with red-teamers to model real attack paths, validate findings, and continuously harden agent logic.
• Founding Responsibilities – Influence roadmap, coding standards, hiring, and investor demos; document designs with clarity for future team members.

What You Bring

• Proven Agentic-AI Chops – You’ve built complex AI agents or autonomous pipelines, not just toy chatbots.
• Python Mastery – Async programming, type hints, testing culture, clean architecture (SOLID / DDD).
• Pentest Expertise – Hands-on knowledge of reconnaissance, exploitation, post-exploitation and common frameworks (Metasploit, Burp, Nmap).
• LLM Know-How – Prompt engineering, embeddings, vector search, model fine-tuning, performance tuning.
• Systems & Security Savvy – Comfortable with Linux internals, networking, sandbox hardening, and least-privilege design.
• Startup DNA – Bias for action, comfort with ambiguity, willingness to own features end-to-end, clear written and verbal communication.

Nice-to-Haves

• CREST/OSCP/OSEP or comparable certifications.
• Contributions to open-source AI or security tooling.
• Experience with vector DBs (Pinecone, Chroma, Weaviate) or MLOps stacks (Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD).
• Cloud fluency (AWS, GCP, Azure) and edge compute (Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects).
• Published research or conference talks (Black Hat, DEF CON, etc.).

What We Offer

• Founding-Team Equity plus competitive cash as funding milestones close.
• Remote-First Flexibility with quarterly strategy sprints in Asia-Pacific.
• High Autonomy & Impact – Your designs will shape the core intellect of the product.
• Hardware & Learning Budget – Conferences, courses, GPUs—whatever lets you operate at peak.
• Mission-Driven Culture – Small, senior team laser-focused on shipping technology that rewrites the rules of cyber offense.

How to Express Interest

Send a brief, confidential note (or LinkedIn DM) with links to a relevant project, paper, or repo and two lines on why autonomous AI security fascinates you. If there’s mutual fit, we’ll schedule an NDA call to dive into vision, tech, and ownership.

Ready to build the brains of the next generation of offensive security? Let’s talk.

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Engineering and Information Technology

• Industries

  Computer and Network Security

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