Lead AI Security Engineer

The posting, as Appian wrote it

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.

Lead AI Security Engineer (Agentic SOC)

Location: McLean/Tysons, VA | On-site (5 days/week)

ABOUT THE TEAM

We are pioneering the next generation of cyber defense by building an Agentic Security Operations Center (SOC). Our mission is to move beyond reactive alerting by creating self-orchestrating, context-aware AI systems capable of autonomous triage, semantic correlation, and proactive threat mitigation. In this role, you will leverage emerging AI capabilities to reimagine how we defend our organization.

THE OPPORTUNITY

The AI SOC Engineering team is at the center of bringing our vision for AI-driven security to This is a squad of builders operating at the intersection of Generative AI, software engineering, and offensive/defensive security. We don't just write scripts; we architect the intelligent fabric of our defensive posture. We build and deploy production-grade, proprietary multi-agent systems that empower our human analysts to handle complex incident response with autonomous agents AI in responsible and scalable ways.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Build & Deploy Agents: Design, test, and deploy autonomous and semi-autonomous AI agents that integrate natively with our enterprise security stack (SIEM, EDR, XDR, and Threat Intel feeds).
• Code the Playbooks: Translate traditional, human-centric SOC playbooks and analyst workflows into deterministic and heuristic agentic pipelines (using DAGs and multi-agent routing).
• Optimize RAG Pipelines: Design, optimize, and maintain production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workflows to inject real-time security context, network topology, and historical incident logs into agent prompts.
• LLM Performance Engineering: Continuously evaluate, benchmark, and optimize LLM performance, context window utilization, latency, and cost-efficiency across various models (OSS and commercial).
• Design Human-in-the-Loop (HITL): Collaborate deeply with Tier 3 Analysts and Threat Hunters to engineer seamless HITL handoff mechanisms, ensuring agents safely escalate complex anomalies to humans.
• Secure the AI: Implement robust security boundaries around our LLM architecture, mitigating risks like prompt injection, data poisoning, model tool-abuse, and addressing the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs .

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 1.5+ years explicitly dedicated to building applications powered by Large Language Models (LLMs)
• 5+ years of experience programming with Python
• 2+ years of experience deploying scalable and responsible

[…]
elopment opportunities.

• Community: We’ll immerse you into our community rooted in respect starting on day one. Appian fosters inclusivity through our 8 employee-led affinity groups . These groups help employees build stronger internal and external networks by planning social, educational, and outreach activities to connect with Appianites and larger initiatives throughout the company.

Benefits

Appian offers a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your health, wellbeing, and financial future. Benefits may include health coverage, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with free mental health support, life and disability insurance, an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP), a retirement/pension plan, wellness dollars, tuition reimbursement, family-forming benefits and more. Benefits vary by country—please ask your Talent Acquisition contact for details specific to the location you are applying to.

About Appian

Appian provides AI automation for the most important business processes at the world’s largest organizations. Our platform is known for its unique power, reliability, and scale. We’ve been automating processes for more than 25 years and have proven expertise in enterprise operations. For more information, visit appian.com .

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Appian is an equal opportunity employer that strives to attract and retain the best talent. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Appian provides reasonable accommodations to applicants in accordance with all applicable laws. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at ReasonableAccommodations@appian.com . Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.

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