Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI

hackerone; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Equity stock options

Unlimited PTO

Paid parental leave

Job summary

HackerOne is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to lead the evolution of its autonomous AI-powered security platform. This role focuses on architecting innovative systems that leverage large language models and agentic frameworks to enhance vulnerability detection. You'll be instrumental in driving AI features across the company, collaborating closely with product and engineering teams.

Located in Austin, TX, this position promotes a flexible work environment and offers a competitive salary range of $230K – $280K with equity options. Benefits include health insurance, unlimited PTO, and parental leave.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience as a software engineer, especially building AI platforms.
• Proven expertise in generative AI and model deployment.
• Solid understanding of AI safety and ethical practices.

Responsibilities

• Architect and enhance autonomous security agents for intelligence.
• Design systems that integrate AI capabilities into HackerOne's platform.
• Establish meaningful metrics and feedback loops for AI model performance.

Skills

AI platform engineering

Large language models (LLMs)

Machine learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch)

MLOps pipelines

AI safety principles

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Ruby on Rails

GraphQL

React

Job description

HackerOne is a global leader in Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). The HackerOne Platform unites agentic AI solutions with the ingenuity of the world’s largest community of security researchers to continuously discover, validate, prioritize, and remediate exposures across code, cloud, and AI systems. Through solutions like bug bounty, vulnerability disclosure, agentic pentesting, AI red teaming, and code security, HackerOne delivers measurable, continuous reduction of cyber risk for enterprises.

HackerOne Values

HackerOne is dedicated to fostering a strong and inclusive culture. Customer Obsessed and prioritizes customer outcomes in our decisions and actions. We Default to Disclosure by operating with transparency and integrity, ensuring trust and accountability. Employees, researchers, customers, and partners Win Together by fostering empowerment, inclusion, respect, and accountability.

Position Summary

At HackerOne, we’re advancing a new era of AI‑powered offensive security. As a Staff AI Engineer, you’ll help shape the evolution of our autonomous HAI platform, driving the integration of advanced AI and agentic frameworks into HackerOne’s products. You will build intelligent security agents that reason, act, and learn—helping security teams identify, validate, and remediate vulnerabilities faster than ever. This is a high‑impact technical role, reporting to the VP, AI Engineering, where you will architect the systems and frameworks that power the next generation of AI‑driven vulnerability discovery.

We embrace a Flexible Work approach, with a requirement to come to the office once per week on Thursdays and to be located within ~50 miles of Seattle, WA; Boston, MA; Washington, DC; or Austin, TX.

What You Will Do

• Architect and enhance our autonomous security agent "Hai," building intelligent systems capable of natural‑language reasoning, vulnerability detection, and actionable recommendations, all grounded in an AI‑First mindset.
• Build components and services that integrate agentic AI design patterns—such as orchestration, memory systems, RAG, long‑horizon tasks, and LLM‑based models—into the HackerOne platform, applying an AI‑First approach to improve vulnerability detection and security automation.
• Partner across Product, Security Research, and Engineering to introduce AI capabilities into the broader HackerOne ecosystem, demonstrating strong Change Agility in a rapidly evolving environment.
• Design and implement AI red‑teaming agents and frameworks that proactively surface weaknesses in LLMs, generative‑AI systems, and applied AI deployments, using First Principles Problem Solving to build durable, foundational solutions.
• Establish meaningful metrics, observability, evaluation frameworks, and continuous feedback loops to improve model performance, safety, and user impact—ensuring decisions are grounded in Data‑Driven Decision Making.
• Stay current with emerging AI safety research, adversarial‑testing techniques, and agentic‑system patterns, integrating those learnings into HackerOne’s responsible‑AI strategy with a growth‑oriented Change Agility mindset.
• Build APIs and integrations that enable seamless interaction between AI models, security tools, and the broader HackerOne platform, ensuring security, scalability, and interoperability across systems.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience as a software engineer, including deep experience building and maintaining production‑grade AI platforms and infrastructure.
• Must be able and willing to come to the office once per week (typically Thursdays).
• Proven expertise in large language models (LLMs), generative AI, and machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Transformers in production environments.
• Strong hands‑on experience in AI platform engineering, including model deployment, MLOps pipelines, model serving infrastructure, and shared AI services architecture.
• Experience building systems that support multiple AI product teams and applications, enabling scalable experimentation and deployment.
• Solid understanding of AI safety and alignment principles, including responsible AI development, bias mitigation, and ethical AI practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI development platforms, model registries, experimentation frameworks, and tools that accelerate AI innovation across organizations.
• Familiarity with ReAct, AutoGen, or Semantic Kernel for agentic orchestration and multi‑agent collaboration.
• Experience in agent action routing, secure tool usage APIs, and feedback loops for autonomous agents.
• Knowledge of prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), and advanced LLM optimization strategies.
• Experience with cloud‑based AI/ML services (AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI, Azure ML) and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) for AI workloads.
• Familiarity with Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, and React, and experience integrating AI capabilities into production web applications and APIs.

Compensation

Seattle, WA; Boston, MA; Washington, DC; or Austin, TX

$230K – $280K * Offers Equity

Job Benefits

• Health (medical, vision, dental), life, and disability insurance*
• Equity stock options
• Retirement plans
• Paid public holidays and unlimited PTO
• Paid maternity and parental leave
• Leaves of absence (including caregiver leave and leave under CO’s Healthy Families and Workplaces Act)
• Employee Assistance Program

*Eligibility may differ by country

We’re committed to building a global team! For certain roles outside the United States, India, the U.K., and the Netherlands, we partner with Remote.com as our Employer of Record (EOR).

Employment at HackerOne is contingent on a background check.

HackerOne is an Equal Opportunity Employer in the terms and conditions of employment for all employees and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or gender expression, national origin, pregnancy, disability or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by international, federal, state, or local laws.

This policy applies to all HackerOne employment practices, including hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, leave of absence, compensation, benefits, training, and apprenticeship. HackerOne makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.

For US based roles only: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, all qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for the position.