Principal Agent Security Engineer

Perception Point; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Fortinet is seeking a Principal Agent Security Engineer in Sunnyvale to lead the design, development, and operation of secure, scalable backend services. You will own security-critical systems, drive architecture decisions, and advance agentic AI and LLM security initiatives.

You will collaborate with product, engineering, and QA teams to shape technology strategy, implement robust security controls, and mentor teams across the product lifecycle.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and operating production backend services.
• Strong system design and architecture skills with trade-offs across security, scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Self-driven and proactive with problem-solving, debugging, and technical leadership.

Responsibilities

• Build AI security solutions for enterprise customers.
• Design and implement security controls for agentic AI systems.
• Provide technical leadership across product development, collaborating with Product, Engineering, and QA to define architecture and deliver secure, scalable solutions.
• Develop pre-sales and post-sales tools to support evaluations, deployments, troubleshooting, and integration.
• Own and operate production services, including troubleshooting, performance optimization, reliability improvements, and hardening of security-critical systems.
• Research emerging technologies and security trends to identify opportunities and develop innovative solutions.
• Drive technical strategy and product roadmap, including feature design and architecture evolution.

Skills

Python/Go

System design

Backend architecture

LLM/Agent security

Agentic AI architecture

Cybersecurity fundamentals

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Job description

Responsibilities

• Build AI security solutions for enterprise customers.


• Design and implement security controls for agentic AI systems.


• Provide technical leadership across product development, working closely with Product, Engineering, and QA teams to define architecture, drive technical decisions, and deliver secure and scalable solutions.


• Develop pre-sales and post-sales tools and environments to support customer evaluations, deployments, troubleshooting, and integration.


• Own and operate production services, including troubleshooting, performance optimization, reliability improvements, and ongoing hardening of security-critical systems.


• Research emerging technologies and security trends to identify new opportunities and develop innovative solutions.


• Drive technical strategy and product roadmap, including new feature design, architecture evolution.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering skills in Python or Go, or in a systems language such as Rust or C/C++.


• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.


• 8+ years of experience building and operating production backend services, including architecture ownership of security-critical and highly available systems.


• Strong system design and architecture skills, with the ability to make sound technical trade-offs across security, scalability, reliability, and performance.


• Self-driven and proactive, with strong problem-solving, debugging, and technical leadership skills and a focus on delivering high-quality solutions.

Strong Plus

• Experience with LLM and agent security, including areas such as prompt injection, tool poisoning, jailbreaks, and agent security controls.


• Agentic AI architecture - Deep understanding of MCP and A2A, with hands-on experience designing and building agentic AI systems, including tool-calling and agent frameworks.


• Cybersecurity background - Professional experience in application security, network security, identity, API security, or other cybersecurity domains.

Fortinet makes possible a digital world that we can always trust through its mission to protect people, devices, and data everywhere. This is why the world's largest enterprises, service providers, and government organizations choose Fortinet to securely accelerate their digital journey. The Fortinet Security Fabric platform delivers broad, integrated, and automated protections across the entire digital attack surface, securing critical devices, data, applications, and connections from the data center to the cloud to the home office. Ranking #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide, more than 615,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. And the Fortinet NSE Training Institute, an initiative of Fortinet’s Training Advancement Agenda (TAA), provides one of the largest and broadest training programs in the industry to make cyber training and new career opportunities available to everyone.

Fortinet is looking for a Principal Agent Security Engineer for our Sunnyvale location.