Principal AI Security Engineer

Citizens; Johnston (RI); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work arrangements

Education reimbursement

Wellness programs

Generous PTO

Job summary

Citizens Bank is seeking a Principal AI Security Engineer to lead security strategy across AI initiatives and cloud environments. You will collaborate with engineering and governance to design secure, scalable AI solutions and protect data and models throughout the lifecycle.

The role requires deep experience in AI security, DevOps, and cloud technologies, with a hybrid work model in a US footprint and a preference for candidates willing to commute to a hub such as Johnston, RI.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in data-intensive applications or data engineering.
• Experience implementing large-scale technological enhancements and pivots.
• Excellent understanding of AI/ML patterns and DevOps.
• Understanding of Python and at least one other programming language.
• Experience with IT infrastructure and cloud development.
• Experience with APIs and highly available, resilient solutions.
• Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in CS or related field.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate on solution design ideation, ensuring product success and enterprise architecture adherence.
• Design, modify, develop and implement software solutions with scalable components.
• Infuse QoS characteristics into distributed service-based designs.
• Lead incident response for AI systems and monitor for anomalies.
• Harden cloud infrastructure and secure AI lifecycles across platforms.

Skills

AI security

Cloud security

Python

DevOps

API security

Security architecture

Data security

Vulnerability assessment

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field

Tools

AWS

Azure

Kubernetes

Job description

Description

Principal AI Security Engineer

Your role as Principal Security Engineer is to work with engineering teams and architecture to produce high-quality technology solutions. You will be given the autonomy to lead, design and develop innovative solutions to some of the biggest technical issues facing the banking industry. As a Principal Security Engineer, you will serve as a peer-leader tasked with pursuing cutting-edge initiatives and solutions. The breadth of Citizens operations ensures a diversity of projects as the bank pivots towards innovation and customer experience.

Locations & Work Arrangement

Remote is not an option, candidates must be willing to commute to one of the following hub locations with a hybrid schedule of 4 days onsite and 1 day remote per week with flexibility in one of the following hubs:

• Phoenix, AZ
• Johnston, RI
• Boston, MA
• Franklin, TN
• Westwood, MA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Charlotte, NC
• Irving, TX
• Cleveland, OH
• Philadelphia, PA
• Marlton, NJ

The Principle Security Engineer will be responsible for:

• Collaborating and contributing insight to solution design ideation, ensuring both the success of the product and adherence to enterprise architecture principles.
• Designing, modifying, developing and implementing software solutions. Building modern, architecturally sound components, tools and applications to meet mission-driven strategic business goals.
• Infusing quality of service characteristics, such as scalability, manageability and maintainability, into distributed service-based system designs
• Employing industry best practices to evaluate, correct and prevent vulnerabilities during the software development process.
• Serving as a peer-leader, encouraging a culture of innovation and accountability
• Build and operationalize security controls that protect AI-powered applications, ensuring models, prompts, and outputs are resilient against misuse and abuse.
• Focus on securing the full AI lifecycle—from data ingestion and model training to deployment and runtime—across both internal applications and external platforms.
• Engineer safeguards against emerging AI threats such as prompt injection, data poisoning, model inversion, and unintended data leakage.
• Strengthen identity and access controls for AI systems, including service identities, API protection, and least-privilege access across SaaS and cloud environments.
• Secure integrations between AI components and enterprise systems (databases, APIs, SaaS tools) to prevent unauthorized access and data exfiltration.
• Protect sensitive data used by AI systems through encryption, tokenization, and privacy-preserving techniques across hybrid and cloud-native architectures.
• Continuously monitor AI systems and agentic behaviors for anomalies, policy violations, and malicious activity using logging and detection engineering practices.
• Harden cloud infrastructure that supports AI workloads, including containers, orchestration platforms, and serverless services, ensuring secure configurations.
• Evaluate and manage risks associated with third-party AI SaaS solutions, focusing on data handling, access control, and vendor security posture.
• Integrate automated security testing into AI development pipelines, including adversarial testing and validation of model robustness.
• Lead incident response efforts related to AI systems, investigating misuse, model drift with security implications, and potential data exposure events.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with architects, developers, and governance teams to align AI security practices with business objectives and regulatory requirements.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of working experience in data intensive applications or data engineering
• Experience implementing large-scale technological enhancements and/or pivots, including pilot implementation and analysis
• Excellent understanding of AI/ML patterns and techniques
• Excellent understanding of DevOps
• Understanding of python and at least one other programming language
• Experience working with IT infrastructure and cloud development
• Experience with API’s
• Experience designing highly available and resilient solutions, automation, identify opportunity of performance improvements
• A bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in computer science or a related field
• Experience in 2 or 3 of the following technology areas. Infrastructure, Security, DevOps, Application Development, database technologies, cloud computing

Desired Qualifications

• Working experience in the financial services industry
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering or a related discipline
• Executive speaking and presentation skills: formal presentations, white-boarding, large and small group presentations

Education and Certifications

• Required: Bachelor's degree
• Preferred: Degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or related discipline

Pay Transparency

The salary range for this position is $150,000 to $190,000 per year, plus an opportunity to earn additional incentive earnings. Actual pay is based on various factors including, but not limited to, the budget, work location, and relevant skills and experience.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage, retirement plans, parental leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs, and generous paid time off exceeding local requirements.

Citizens Benefits Overview

For an overview of our benefits, visit our Careers site: Citizens Benefits Overview.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.