Security Engineer - AI Security

Position: Staff Security Engineer - AI Security
About Rivian Rivian is on a mission to keep the world adventurous forever. This goes for the emissions-free Electric Adventure Vehicles we build, and the curious, courageous souls we seek to attract. As a company, we constantly challenge what's possible, never simply accepting what has always been done. We reframe old problems, seek new solutions and operate comfortably in areas that are unknown.

Our backgrounds are diverse, but our team shares a love of the outdoors and a desire to protect it for future generations. Role Summary As a Security Engineer at Rivian, you will spearhead the adversarial evaluation of our AI-enabled features and internal platforms. This role will operate across Offensive Security, Secure Architecture, and AI/ML. You will act as one of Cybersecurity Assurance's primary authorities on AI-related risk.

You will independently evaluate, challenge, and validate the safety and integrity of these AI initiatives. You will both break and build, applying attacker mindset & adversarial thinking to challenge the assumptions in our entire AI ecosystem, while simultaneously creating the automated tools and guardrails needed to continuously expose and mitigate critical risks. Responsibilities
1. Adversarial Evaluation (The "Breaker") AI Red Teaming:
Design and execute deep, unconstrained adversarial assessments on our applied AI systems (e.g., voice assistants, RAG services, AI agents), testing safety boundaries and guardrails through offensive security assessments Challenge Assumptions:
Push AI guardrail mechanisms beyond their intended limits. Your goal is to determine exactly when and how these controls fail, proving the difference between a system's expected behavior and its actual resilience against an attacker Assess Agentic Workflows:
Evaluate multi-agent and LLM-integrated workflows for complex risks such as privilege escalation, unsafe action chaining, direct/indirect prompt injection, and other unintended side effects.
2. Engineering & Automation (The "Builder") Automate adversarial testing:
Build AI-driven frameworks to scale our Red Teaming and vulnerability discovery. You will leverage LLMs, anomaly detection, and corpora of attack prompts to enhance our automated coverage. Build Cross-Functional Tooling:
Design and operate AI-driven security agents and automated frameworks that amplify the efforts of our broader Cybersecurity organization. Co-Design Defenses:
Partner closely with engineering teams to brainstorm, review & validate remediations for the gaps you find
3. Cross-Functional Influence (The "Advocate") Scale AI Security Practices:
Threat model AI architectures (LLMs, vector stores, data flows) and build frameworks for continuous AI-driven adversarial testing that scale across all product teams. Proactive Security Research:
Stay ahead of the curve. Spend time researching new AI attacks and prototyping guardrails to see if they work in our environment. Foster Security Culture:
Collaborate within a cross-functional team to develop relationships, influence senior stakeholders, and drive alignment on AI risk tolerance and mitigation priorities Qualifications Adversarial Mindset:
Experience working in Offensive Security, Red Teaming, Vulnerability Research, Penetration Testing or adjacent role, with a demonstrated ability to evaluate complex systems with the mindset of a determined attacker to find meaningful business impact AI/ML Fluency:
Deep understanding of generative AI systems, including RAG pipelines, large language models, vector databases, and multi-agent orchestration frameworks, and their specific security failure modes You don't just know what "Indirect Prompt Injection" is, you know how to bypass filters to achieve it. Engineering Proficiency:
Hands-on experience building, testing, or securing applications using Python/Go. You are familiar with modern ML frameworks (like PyTorch, Hugging Face, or Lang Chain) and bring practical experience utilizing specialized AI red teaming tools (such as Garak or PyRIT). Courage & Clarity:
You are unafraid to challenge assumptions or expose uncomfortable truths in service of system safety, and skilled at communicating high-impact risks clearly to executives and technical peers Adversarial Depth:
Bonus points if you have contributed to the security or AI community through open-source tools, research, or vulnerability disclosures that demonstrate your depth in adversarial thinking Pay Disclosure Salary Range for this role is $140,600 - $175,800 for Georgia based applicants. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting.

An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, specific competencies, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, shift, and organizational needs. The successful candidate may be eligible for annual performance bonus and equity awards.…