Lead AI Security Engineer

Appian; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) plan with company match

Flexible time off

Medical, dental, and vision plans

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Wellness programs

Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Appian in McLean, VA is seeking a Lead AI Security Engineer for our Agentic SOC to design and deploy autonomous AI agents that integrate with SIEM, EDR, XDR, and Threat Intel feeds.

You will translate SOC playbooks into agentic pipelines, optimize RAG workflows, and ensure secure LLM architecture while collaborating with Tier 3 Analysts and Threat Hunters.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 1.5+ years explicitly dedicated to building applications powered by Large Language Models (LLMs)
• 5+ years of experience programming with Python
• 2+ years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure)
• Security-First Mindset: blend software engineering with security knowledge
• Adaptability: ability to bring clarity to big, undefined problems in security
• Deeply Technical: strong foundation in engineering and mathematics for intelligent systems
• Resilient: able to forge new paths to security goals

Responsibilities

• Build & Deploy Agents: design, test, and deploy autonomous and semi-autonomous AI agents integrated with enterprise security stack (SIEM, EDR, XDR, Threat Intel)
• Code the Playbooks: translate SOC playbooks into deterministic agentic pipelines
• Optimize RAG Pipelines: maintain production-grade RAG workflows with real-time security context and logs
• LLM Performance Engineering: evaluate and optimize LLM performance, latency and cost across models
• Design Human-in-the-Loop: engineer HITL handoff mechanisms with Tier 3 Analysts and Threat Hunters
• Secure the AI: implement robust security boundaries around LLM architecture and address OWASP Top 10 for LLMs

Skills

Software engineering

LLMs

Python

Cloud deployment

Security mindset

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

AutoGen

CrewAI

Semantic Kernel

Kubernetes

Job description

Lead AI Security Engineer (Agentic SOC)

Location: McLean/Tysons, VA | On-site (5 days/week)

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.

ABOUT THE TEAM

We are pioneering the next generation of cyber defense by building an Agentic Security Operations Center (SOC). Our mission is to move beyond reactive alerting by creating self-orchestrating, context-aware AI systems capable of autonomous triage, semantic correlation, and proactive threat mitigation. In this role, you will leverage emerging AI capabilities to reimagine how we defend our organization.

THE OPPORTUNITY

The AI SOC Engineering team is at the center of bringing our vision for AI-driven security to this is a squad of builders operating at the intersection of Generative AI, software engineering, and offensive/defensive security. We don't just write scripts; we architect the intelligent fabric of our defensive posture. We build and deploy production-grade, proprietary multi-agent systems that empower our human analysts to handle complex incident response with autonomous agents AI in responsible and scalable ways.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Build & Deploy Agents: Design, test, and deploy autonomous and semi-autonomous AI agents that integrate natively with our enterprise security stack (SIEM, EDR, XDR, and Threat Intel feeds).
• Code the Playbooks: Translate traditional, human-centric SOC playbooks and analyst workflows into deterministic and heuristic agentic pipelines (using DAGs and multi-agent routing).
• Optimize RAG Pipelines: Design, optimize, and maintain production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workflows to inject real-time security context, network topology, and historical incident logs into agent prompts.
• LLM Performance Engineering: Continuously evaluate, benchmark, and optimize LLM performance, context window utilization, latency, and cost-efficiency across various models (OSS and commercial).
• Design Human-in-the-Loop (HITL): Collaborate deeply with Tier 3 Analysts and Threat Hunters to engineer seamless HITL handoff mechanisms, ensuring agents safely upscale complex anomalies to humans.
• Secure the AI: Implement robust security boundaries around our LLM architecture, mitigating risks like prompt injection, data poisoning, model tool-abuse, and addressing the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 1.5+ years explicitly dedicated to building applications powered by Large Language Models (LLMs)
• 5+ years of experience programming with Python 2+ years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure)
• You love to build systems:
• Security-First Mindset: You blend foundational software engineering with practical security domain knowledge. You understand that the best defenses are built on a bedrock of clean, reliable, and scalable engineering.
• Adaptability: You thrive on bringing clarity to big, undefined problems in the security space. You love asking questions, digging deep to uncover the root of threats, and articulating your findings concisely.
• Deeply Technical: You possess a strong foundation in engineering and mathematics. Your expertise in software and AI enables you to design intelligent systems that can perform autonomous triage and semantic correlation.
• Resilient: You are a trailblazer who can forge new paths to achieve security goals in an evolving threat landscape.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Hands-on experience building multi-agent or complex orchestration systems using tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI, or Semantic Kernel
• Proven experience working with production Vector Databases (e.g., Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus, or Weaviate ) for semantic chunking, embedding generation, and metadata filtering.
• Experience interfacing with cybersecurity platforms via REST APIs/Webhooks (e.g., Splunk, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Sentinel, Palo Alto XSOAR).
• Experience deploying and scaling AI workloads in containerized cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP using Kubernetes/EKS/AKS)
• Understanding of fine-tuning methodologies (LoRA, QLoRA) for smaller, domain-specific open-source models (e.g., Llama 3, Mistral) tailored for security log analysis
• Passion for staying abreast of the latest AI research and security systems, and an ability to judiciously apply novel techniques in production.

Salary & Benefits

The base salary range represents a good faith and reasonable estimate of the range at the time of posting. Actual compensation will be dependent on a number of factors including, but not limited to, the candidate’s relevant work experience, qualifications, internal peer equity, and market and business conditions that exist when extending an offer. A discretionary bonus may be awarded in recognition of individual and company performance.

• Base Salary Range $150,000—$275,000 USD
• 401(k) plan with company match
• Flexible time off
• Paid parental leave
• Medical, dental, and vision plans
• Life insurance
• Disability insurance
• Wellness programs
• Flexible spending accounts
• Health savings account contributions
• Employee referral bonus program
• Learning and development resources
• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Retirement/pension plan
• Wellness dollars
• Tuition reimbursement
• Family-forming benefits
• Health coverage
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with free mental health support
• Life and disability insurance
• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Retirement/pension plan
• Wellness dollars
• Tuition reimbursement
• Family-forming benefits and more

Benefits may include health coverage, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with free mental health support, life and disability insurance, an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP), a retirement/pension plan, wellness dollars, tuition reimbursement, family-forming benefits and more. Certain positions may be eligible for equity awards. Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation, commission, bonus, or benefit plans.

About Appian

Appian provides AI automation for the most important business processes at the world’s largest organizations. Our platform is known for its unique power, reliability, and scale. We’ve been automating processes for more than 25 years and understand enterprise operations like no one else. For more information, visit appian.com. [Nasdaq: APPN]

Appian is an equal opportunity employer that strives to attract and retain the best talent. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. Appian provides reasonable accommodations to applicants in accordance with all applicable laws. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at [e-mail]. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address. Appian’s Applicant & Candidate Privacy Notice