Applied AI Engineer, Cyber, Government

The Applied AI Engineering team enables secure and impactful implementation of GenAI solutions, serving as technical thought partners and trusted advisors to clients. In this Government team role, you will empower agencies to evolve operations through automated content synthesis, advanced search, and bespoke applications using OpenAI's latest foundational technologies.

We are looking for a hands-on Applied AI Engineer with deep cybersecurity experience and a product mindset to help government and national security customers apply frontier AI to critical cyber missions. You will bring practical expertise in red teaming, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, and similar fields, ideally developed through work with the defense and intelligence sector. Working directly with cyber operators, security researchers, and engineering teams, you'll identify high-value applications, write code, build and evaluate AI-powered tools and agentic workflows, and move solutions from prototype into secure operational use. You'll design architectures using OpenAI models, APIs, and existing security tooling, grounded in customers' mission requirements and operational constraints. This role requires frequent on-site engagement at customer and partner facilities across the DMV area, including classified environments.

• Work on-site with clients in the DMV area
• Own hands-on implementation for government cyber use cases
• Lead technical discovery to identify high-value AI applications across authorized red teaming, adversary emulation, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, detection engineering, incident response, malware analysis, and similar domains
• Build secure cyber prototypes, agentic workflows, and reference architectures using OpenAI models, supported APIs, Codex, and integrations with customers' security tools and infrastructure
• Design and run evaluations that measure technical correctness, security impact, reliability, and operator effectiveness
• Partner with government security leaders, mission teams, account owners, integrators, and OpenAI Security and Product teams
• Contribute reusable code, examples, and technical guidance to open-source developer and enterprise resources
• Scale the Applied AI Engineering function by sharing knowledge and publishing notebooks and implementation patterns
• Translate customer deployments, operational insights, and evaluation results into actionable feedback for Product, Engineering, and Research teams

• Hold an active TS/SCI clearance and a current, active full-scope polygraph
• Bring 7+ years of hands-on technical experience in cybersecurity, cyber operations, or security-focused software engineering, including work directly with government customers or national security mission teams
• Have practical experience across offensive and defensive cybersecurity, with depth in areas such as red teaming, adversary emulation, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, or detection engineering
• Experience supporting NSA or comparable national security cyber missions is strongly preferred
• Have personally written code, integrated security tools, and built, tested, and deployed cyber capabilities or security automation with measurable technical and mission outcomes
• Understand secure network and cloud architecture, identity and least privilege, restricted operating environments, application-security toolchains, authorization boundaries, and human-approved remediation
• Have hands-on programming experience with languages such as Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Go, and can integrate APIs, agents, command-line tools, and security platforms into reliable workflows
• Relevant toolchains may include GitHub, CodeQL, Snyk, Semgrep, SARIF, Jira, and CI/CD systems
• Communicate clearly with cyber practitioners, engineers, senior leaders, and nontechnical stakeholders
• Own problems end to end and learn unfamiliar tools, systems, or mission requirements as needed
• Approach collaboration with humility, share knowledge generously, and help colleagues and customers succeed
• Drive multiple concurrent projects with urgency, sound judgment, and clear prioritization

Salary range: $211K – $302K USD per year, plus equity. OpenAI offers a comprehensive benefits package including health, dental, vision, 401(k) plan, paid parental leave, and more.

Apply through the OpenAI careers portal using the provided application link.