Security Engineer - Guarding the Future of AI-Powered Materials Discovery
Join CuspAI, a frontier AI company at the forefront of solving humanity's most critical challenges through breakthrough materials. While nature took eons, we leverage cutting-edge AI to unlock trillion-dollar material discoveries in months, not millennia. Our mission? To power human progress by innovating in areas like energy, clean water, the future of compute, and carbon capture. Led by the world's most cited researchers in AI, chemistry, and engineering, we're building a 'search engine' for next-generation materials.
This is where you come in. As an early security hire, your work isn't just impactful – it's foundational. You'll be instrumental in protecting the proprietary AI models and sensitive research data that drive our unparalleled materials discovery engine, ensuring our world-class innovation remains secure and trusted as we scale.
The Impact You'll Make
In a landscape where AI innovation moves at light speed, the security of our proprietary materials discovery platform is paramount. We're seeking a visionary Security Engineer to architect and implement the core security infrastructure that safeguards our intellectual property and empowers our rapid growth.
You won't be a gatekeeper; you'll be an enabler. This role is about building automated security pipelines and AI-specific guardrails from the ground up, embedding a "shift-left" security culture where protection is a fundamental product feature. You'll ensure our underlying infrastructure, frontier models, and world-class IP are robustly secured, maintaining the integrity of our research and the trust of our global partners.
What You'll Do
Pioneering AI-Specific Security & IP Protection
Architect and implement defenses across the entire ML lifecycle, securing against data poisoning and shielding our proprietary model weights from theft.
Design and deploy sophisticated prompt injection defenses and runtime firewalls to prevent unauthorized manipulation of our LLM interfaces.
Establish AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) to continuously monitor and catalog our self-hosted models, internal training datasets, and proprietary endpoints.
Architecting Cloud Security, CI/CD & Core DevSecOps
Integrate automated security "guardrails" directly into our CI/CD workflows, encompassing secret scanning, API exposure checks, and software composition analysis (SCA).
Codify robust security policies using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), guaranteeing automatic compliance of all cloud resources with global standards like GDPR and SOC2.
Take ownership of secrets management and vulnerability patching for our containerized environments (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), ensuring a resilient research ecosystem.
Design and enforce strict, least-privilege Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls to meticulously isolate sensitive training data and critical research workloads.
Cultivating Interdisciplinary Collaboration & a Security-First Culture
Lead incident response efforts by proactively monitoring production logs for anomalies and collaborating closely with AI Researchers to deploy rapid, effective fixes.
Empower our engineering team by providing intuitive tools for local IDE security scanning and essential pre-commit hooks, fostering shared ownership.
Act as a pivotal security educator, cultivating a robust culture of shared responsibility across our diverse AI, chemistry, and engineering teams.
Partner strategically with researchers, chemists, and engineers to translate complex security requirements into practical, efficient workflows that accelerate, rather than impede, scientific progress.
What You'll Bring
A deep passion for CuspAI's mission to use AI for planetary-scale impact, coupled with a keen understanding of the high stakes involved in securing "deep tech" intellectual property.
3+ years of hands-on experience in a DevSecOps, Cloud Security, or Site Reliability Engineering role, ideally within a dynamic startup or an AI-centric organization.
Demonstrated expertise in building and securing robust CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins).
Strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi) and securing major cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
A comprehensive understanding of container security and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
Practical knowledge of various security frameworks and a proven ability to implement them effectively without hindering development velocity.
Bonus Points (Differentiating Skills, Not Required)
Direct experience with cutting-edge AI-specific security tools or defending against LLM-specific vulnerabilities (e.g., OWASP Top 10 for LLMs).
Hands-on experience with AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) tools.
Relevant industry certifications such as AWS Certified Security, CSEP, or OSCP.
A background or personal interest in materials science, chemistry, or the fascinating intersection of AI and physical sciences.
Location & Work Environment
This role offers flexibility to be based in our Cambridge, London, Amsterdam or Berlin offices. We foster a collaborative environment, with an expectation of being in the office three days per week. As part of your initial journey with us, you will spend at least a few weeks in our Cambridge/London office to immerse yourself in our platform and connect with the team in person. Regular travel to other European and global locations for collaboration and project work may also be required.
What We Offe
Competitive Compensation & Equity: We reward your impact and growth with a competitive salary and meaningful equity in CuspAI, giving you a direct stake in our success.
Generous Time Off: Recharge with 28 days holiday (DE, NL, UK) or 21 days holiday (JP, SG, US), plus local public holidays.
"Gold Standard" Parental Leave: We support your family with 26 weeks for primary caregivers and 12 weeks for secondary caregivers, both at full pay.
Professional Development Budget: Invest in your continuous growth with a dedicated budget to stay ahead of industry trends and expand your skillset.
Solve Meaningful Problems: Directly contribute to advancing materials science and addressing critical sustainability and climate challenges using bleeding-edge AI and revolutionary techniques.
True Interdisciplinary Teamwork: Thrive in a deeply collaborative environment bridging world-class AI research, computational chemistry, and experimental science, surrounded by experts who love to share knowledge.
Join us in shaping the future of materials with AI. Together, we can create groundbreaking solutions for a more sustainable world.
CuspAI is an equal opportunities employer dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We actively encourage applications from all backgrounds and value the unique perspectives and contributions that diversity brings to our team. Please let us know if you require any specific adjustments during or after the interview process; we will do everything we can within reason to accommodate.