Staff AI Engineer - Security LLM Architect (Remote)

Ladders; United States; Remote; USD 187,000 - 252,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote options

AI in cybersecurity

Cutting-edge tools

Inclusive culture

Mentorship opportunities

Job summary

Staff AI Engineer at Ladders will lead the design and implementation of advanced LLM and agentic AI capabilities that strengthen security-focused products. You will help define model strategy, drive decisions across the AI stack, and ensure solutions are scalable, reliable, and aligned with customer needs.

The role requires close collaboration with Product and platform teams and hands-on technical leadership to boost team execution and delivery.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software or ML engineering experience, including 2+ years in production LLM or agentic AI systems.
• Preferred Master's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Proven track record of delivering scalable, production-grade AI systems with technical leadership and mentoring
• Deep understanding of LLMs, including transformer architecture and training methodologies
• Advanced skills in PyTorch, including custom model code and distributed training techniques
• Hands-on experience with fine-tuning and post-training of open-weight LLMs using various methods
• Strong knowledge of inference optimization and context engineering for AI systems

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and architecture of LLM and agentic AI systems within security products
• Recommend model strategies, including the use of frontier or open-source models
• Fine-tune and deploy open-source LLMs on security data, overseeing the entire process
• Optimize LLM inference for quality, latency, and cost through improved engineering practices
• Establish evaluation criteria as a release gate for AI systems
• Conduct design reviews and navigate complex technical trade-offs
• Mentor team engineers and collaborate with Product and platform teams to align solutions with customer needs

Skills

LLM systems

Production ML

Mentoring

Transformer architectures

Context engineering

Inference optimization

System design

Education

Master's degree in CS/ML or equivalent

Tools

PyTorch

Open-source LLMs

Job description

Staff AI Engineer at Ladders will lead the design and implementation of advanced LLM and agentic AI capabilities that strengthen security-focused products. You will help define model strategy, drive decisions across the AI stack, and ensure solutions are scalable, reliable, and aligned with customer needs.

The role requires close collaboration with Product and platform teams and hands-on technical leadership to boost team execution and delivery.