View : Cybersecurity Engineer

The Civilization Research Institute (CRI) is a research center focused on understanding and mitigating catastrophic and existential risk. Our mission is to create and disseminate actionable knowledge and wisdom that is essential for navigating the meta crisis, and to undertake basic research into viable future forms for global civilization. Our work spans technology, governance, ecological tipping points, financial systems, civilization theory, and sense‑making.

We operate in a high‑trust, low‑ego environment where clarity, integrity, and long‑term thinking are essential.

If you’d like a quick overview of our work, this video with our Executive Director, Daniel Schmachtenberger, is a good place to start.

The Cybersecurity Engineer will design, implement, operate, and continuously improve the technical controls protecting the organization’s networks, systems, endpoints, communications, LLM/AI services, and data from cyber threats. Working closely with the CTO and cybersecurity leadership, this role emphasizes hands‑on security engineering, threat intelligence, vulnerability assessments, monitoring and detection, incident response, secure configuration, and security automation, including the practical use of LLMs/agents in cyber defense and protection against AI-enabled and agentic threats.

• Our preference is for this to be a full‑time, on‑site role based out of Asheville, NC. We will also consider strong candidates who would work remotely with the ability to travel to Asheville as needed.
• The role will report to the Chief Technology Officer.

• Working closely with the CTO and cybersecurity leadership, manage hardware/software security review and configuration, ensuring all devices and systems have appropriate security settings.
• Manage password managers, VPNs, secure communications channels, secure document‑sharing systems, identity and access configurations, LLM services, and related security tooling.
• Implement appropriate access controls, logging, data‑handling settings, and technical safeguards for approved LLM/AI services, coding agents, and other model‑enabled tools.

• Monitor network traffic, system logs, security alerts, and relevant threat intelligence for signs of suspicious activity or anomalies that could indicate potential threats.
• Use LLMs, agents, and emerging agentic cyber capabilities for security analysis, triage, automation, and hardening with appropriate safeguards, human validation, and secure handling of sensitive information.
• Detect, investigate, and mitigate attacks and suspicious activity as early as possible, including threats enabled by automated or agentic attack techniques.
• Conduct regular vulnerability assessments, coordinate or perform penetration testing, and carry out incident response activities to mitigate potential security threats and minimize downtime.
• Implement, maintain, and test technical recovery controls in accordance with disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

• Review, refine, and implement technical controls required by current security protocols across information, operational, cyber, network, and personnel security.
• Translate security policies and standards into practical configurations, including access controls, security classifications, data protection protocols, secure document‑sharing procedures, and security of off‑premises devices.
• Implement LLM and AI use protocols through technical controls for approved services, data handling, access, logging, tool permissions, secrets management, and agentic coding workflows.
• Maintain clear technical documentation and support…