Gen AI Security Engineer — Secure AI Platforms

Cisco Systems, Inc.; Clegg (NC); On-site; USD 129,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) match

Paid parental leave

Bonus/incentives

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a security engineering professional to design and implement security controls for Generative AI systems, including LLMs, RAG pipelines, and agent workflows.

You will identify AI-specific threats and establish guardrails to ensure safe tool use and secure model access. The role requires hands-on experience with cloud-native security, distributed systems, and secure deployment practices, with a strong emphasis on authentication, authorization, and data protection.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity related field or equivalent certifications along with work experience.
• 3+ years of experience in application security, cloud security, or platform security engineering.
• Hands-on experience securing distributed systems or cloud-native applications (Kubernetes, APIs, microservices).
• Experience designing and implementing authentication, authorization, and data protection controls.
• Strong programming/scripting skills (Python, Go, or similar) for building security tooling and automation.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement security controls for Generative AI systems, including LLM-based applications, RAG pipelines, and agent-driven workflows.
• Identify and mitigate AI-specific threats such as prompt injection, data exfiltration, insecure tool usage, and model abuse.
• Establish guardrails for prompt handling, input/output validation, and safe tool invocation to ensure secure agent behavior.
• Secure Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines by enforcing data access controls, source integrity, and retrieval boundary protections.
• Define and enforce model access controls, API protections, and runtime monitoring to prevent misuse and unauthorized access.
• Partner with AI platform and infrastructure teams to integrate security into model deployment pipelines and inference services.
• Conduct threat modeling and security assessments for AI systems, including model lifecycle, data pipelines, and inference endpoints.
• Build automated detection and response mechanisms for AI-specific risks, including anomalous queries and unsafe outputs.

Skills

Application security

Cloud security

Platform security

Kubernetes security

Python/Go scripting

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Cybersecurity or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Job description

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a security engineering professional to design and implement security controls for Generative AI systems, including LLMs, RAG pipelines, and agent workflows.

You will identify AI-specific threats and establish guardrails to ensure safe tool use and secure model access. The role requires hands-on experience with cloud-native security, distributed systems, and secure deployment practices, with a strong emphasis on authentication, authorization, and data protection.