As a leader in cybersecurity, Rapid7 is expanding our global AI footprint and is looking for a passionate Senior AI Engineer to join Rapid7’s AI Centre of Excellence. The AI centre of excellence is on a mission to use AI to accelerate threat investigation, detection and response (D&R) capabilities of our Security Operations Centre (SOC) for both conventional networks and cloud environments.
You should be ready to design and deliver solutions that address complex, unsolved challenges, working closely with development teams, data engineering, product managers and UI/UX teams along the way.
About the Team
The AI Center of Excellence team designs, prototypes and ships production AI models and systems. Our mission is to leverage the best available technology to protect our customers' attack surfaces. For example, we partner closely with Rapid7’s Detection and Response teams, including our MDR service, to leverage AI/ML for enhanced customer security and threat detection.
We operate with a creative, iterative approach, building on 20+ years of threat analysis and a growing patent portfolio. The environment is collaborative, sharing knowledge and developing internal learning. If you’re passionate about AI and want to make a major impact in a fast-paced, innovative environment, this is your opportunity.
About the Role
As a Staff AI Engineer, you will lead the design and delivery of AI systems that power next-generation security intelligence at scale. You’ll bridge the gap between R&D and production — architecting reliable, performant, and ethical AI systems that deliver measurable value to customers. You’ll serve as a technical lead for major initiatives, mentor other engineers, and drive adoption of best practices for model lifecycle management, experimentation, and observability. Specifically, your focus will be to:
1. Lead the end-to-end design, implementation, and deployment of AI/ML models and systems that directly support customer-facing products.
2. Translate business or product goals into technical strategies, guiding data and model architecture decisions.
3. Drive adoption of scalable, reproducible workflows for experimentation, evaluation, and deployment.
4. Mentor and coach engineers and data scientists, fostering technical growth and knowledge sharing.
5. Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and UX teams to align AI development with product outcomes.
6. Stay current with emerging AI technologies (e.g., agentic frameworks, generative models, multimodal systems) and identify practical applications for cybersecurity use cases.
7. Contribute to the design of AI governance standards and responsible AI practices.
The skills and qualities you’ll bring include:
8. Proven expertise in building and deploying AI systems in production using Python and modern ML frameworks.
9. Hands-on experience with tools such as:
scikit-learn, PyTorch, or TensorFlow for model development.
AWS Bedrock, Sagemaker, HuggingFace, or equivalent cloud AI stacks.
CrewAI or other orchestration frameworks for agentic AI systems.
Pandas, NumPy, Airflow, or Databricks for data engineering and workflow automation.
10. Understanding of model lifecycle management, including monitoring, retraining, and versioning.
11. Experience influencing architecture and tooling decisions across teams.
12. Ability to evaluate trade-offs between model performance, latency, and interpretability.
13. Familiarity with cybersecurity, or adjacent high-signal domains (e.g., finance, healthcare, marketplaces), is a strong plus.
14. Enjoy mentoring and elevating the technical performance of your peers.
15. Demonstrate curiosity and persistence - you’re excited to explore new techniques, tools, and ideas while maintaining focus on reliability and value.
16. Balance autonomy with accountability, with a strong sense of ownership for delivering AI capabilities that make measurable impact
17. Strong written & verbal communication with the ability to convey complex ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
18. Approaches change with openness and curiosity, seeking to understand the “why” and helping teams adapt quickly and effectively
19. Core Value Embodiment: Embody our core values to foster a culture of excellence that drives meaningful impact and collective success.
We know that the best ideas and solutions come from multi-dimensional teams. That’s because these teams reflect a variety of backgrounds and professional experiences. If you are excited about this role and feel your experience can make an impact, please don’t be shy - apply today.
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