Distinguished AI Engineer

Our Engineering organization is scaling its AI Engineering capabilities under new leadership, creating an opportunity to define the future of AI at Rapid7. We're looking for Distinguished AI Engineers to set the long-term technical vision for LLM and agentic AI systems, shaping how AI transforms our products, platforms and engineering capabilities. Operating at the highest level of technical leadership, you'll influence organization-wide strategy and investment, drive innovation across the most complex and consequential challenges, and establish the technical direction and standards that enable Rapid7 to deliver differentiated value for our global customers. You'll also elevate engineering excellence across the organization through thought leadership, mentorship and influence.
About the Team
AI is reshaping cybersecurity on both sides. Attackers can use AI to strike at machine speed, and only AI-powered defense can keep up. At the same time, organizations can only adopt AI with confidence if it is secure. Rapid7 sits at the intersection of security and AI, and we are building industry-defining products for this new era.
Rapid7's AI Engineering team builds the AI that powers our security platform. We are AI engineers and applied scientists who take models from research to production, combining open-source and frontier LLMs, AI agents, and fast predictive models with more than 20 years of Rapid7 security expertise. Our work drives core use cases across Detection and Response, such as alert triage, threat investigation, and automated response, and Exposure and Remediation, such as vulnerability prioritization, attack surface risk assessment, and guided remediation. Together, these help customers stop threats faster and fix what matters most.
About the Role
As a Distinguished AI Engineer, your primary responsibility will be to set the multi-year AI technology strategy for Rapid7's security platform and ensure it is executed across multiple organizations, solving the problems that will define our competitive position. You are an authority on LLMs and agentic systems from transformer internals through training, fine-tuning and inference at scale, you stay close to the hardest technical problems. You know where LLMs shine and where they fall short, and you treat them as one tool in the AI toolbox, alongside predictive AI and classical ML, architecting the right approach for each problem. Specifically your focus will be to:

• Define the AI technology vision, architecture strategy and multi-year roadmap across Detection and Response, Exposure and Remediation and the wider platform
• Shape company-wide investment and model strategy, including where to build, buy or partner, and which frontier, open-source and in-house model capabilities to invest in
• Sponsor and guide the highest-risk, highest-impact AI initiatives across multiple organisations, stepping into the hardest technical problems to unblock them
• Establish the engineering, evaluation and responsible-AI standards that govern how every AI system at Rapid7 is built, evaluated and released
• Partner with executive leadership to align AI strategy with business strategy, product direction and customer needs
• Anticipate shifts in AI and the threat landscape, and drive the changes Rapid7 needs to make in response
• Mentor and develop Senior Principal, Principal and Staff engineers, building a deep bench of AI engineering leadership
• Represent Rapid7 as a recognised voice in AI and security with customers, partners, researchers and the industry

The skills and qualities you'll bring include:

• 16+ years of software or ML engineering experience, including 2+ years leading the design of production LLM or agentic AI systems. A PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI or a related field is preferred, or equivalent depth of expertise demonstrated through industry experience and technical contributions
• A track record of defining technical strategy and platforms that shaped products or businesses at company scale, with company-wide impact through technical leadership, mentoring and standards
• Authoritative, leading-edge expertise in LLMs and AI systems, including transformer architecture, training, post-training, evaluation and inference optimization at scale
• Deep technical breadth across predictive AI, classical ML, distributed systems and data platforms, with the judgment to make efficient, transparent decisions about where each approach fits based on accuracy, latency, cost and risk
• Experience shaping evaluation strategy, safety and responsible-AI practices for LLM and agent systems
• Experience scaling AI workloads in production, ideally on AWS, with a command of how infrastructure choices drive quality, latency and cost
• Takes accountability for long-term technical direction and outcomes, anticipating strategic risks, driving resolution of the most consequential challenges and ensuring AI investments deliver sustained business and customer value
• An exceptional communicator who can articulate a compelling technical vision, influence senior leadership and shape strategic decisions on AI direction and investment
• Builds alignment among senior technical and business stakeholders, influencing long-term AI priorities and investment across organisational boundaries
• Shapes the long-term AI vision around customer needs and commercial opportunity, influencing strategic investment decisions by balancing differentiated customer value, competitive advantage and the sustainable economics of building and scaling AI across Rapid7
• Thrive in ambiguity and drive change at the leading edge of AI, focusing forward as the technology and the threat landscape evolve
• Sustained recognition as an industry expert in AI, evidenced by publications, patents, open-source leadership, or influence in industry and standards bodies
• Develop and inspire senior technical talent across the organisation and grow the next generation of AI technical leaders
• 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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About Rapid7
At Rapid7, our vision is to create a secure digital world for our customers, our industry, and our communities. We do this by harnessing our collective expertise and passion to challenge what's possible and drive extraordinary impact. We're building a dynamic and collaborative workplace where new ideas are welcome.
Protecting 11,500+ customers against bad actors and threats means we're continuing to push the envelope just like we' ve been doing for the past 20 years. If you 're ready to solve some of the toughest challenges in cybersecurity, we're ready to help you take command of your career. Join us.
Rapid7, Inc. is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. A candidate's salary is determined by various factors including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, and certifications. We evaluate compensation decisions on a case-by-case basis, and it is not typical for an individual to be hired at the very top of the salary range.
The annual salary range for this role, depending on location, is:
United States: $273,900.00 - 370,500.00 USD Annual
Salary ranges may vary based on geographical location. This range does not include variable/incentive compensation, equity and benefits (where applicable/eligible).
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other status protected by applicable national, federal, state or local law.