AI-Native Security Engineer – Senior

The opportunity

AI systems are moving from generating content to taking action across data, tools, and business processes. You will make that agency defensible by embedding security throughout the lifecycle, turning emerging threats into practical controls that help teams pursue ambitious AI use cases safely.

This is a builder role for someone who enjoys both finding flaws and creating the safer path. You will work alongside product and engineering teams, prove controls under adversarial conditions, and replace one-off reviews with reusable patterns, measurable coverage, clear evidence, and rehearsed ways to respond when systems behave unexpectedly.

About Challenger

Challenger is a new EY program focused on building the firm’s next generation of services. It pursues opportunities where AI enables a fundamentally different service and way of delivering it, including rethinking existing offerings and developing new ones.

Small, dedicated teams build and test ideas in real conditions. Solutions that demonstrate clear business value and operational readiness transition to the business for adoption and scale.

Challenger Core develops and maintains the shared technology, methods, and risk and quality guardrails that support this work. Each team contributes reusable tools and practices, helping make the next service faster and less costly to build.

Your key responsibilities

• Set the security direction. Own reusable AI security patterns, control objectives, reference architectures, and threat models aligned to the risk and autonomy of each use case.
• Join builders early. Work with teams before key design choices are fixed, identifying credible attack paths and shaping controls that fit the product and delivery model.
• Design scoped authority. Create practical patterns for identity, access, isolation, approvals, and recovery so tool-using AI acts within clear and enforceable boundaries.
• Protect sensitive information. Embed security across the data lifecycle, preserving confidentiality, integrity, provenance, permitted use, and monitored access.
• Secure the delivery path. Integrate automated security tests, policy gates, trusted artifacts, traceable changes, and safe rollback into engineering workflows.
• Test adversarially. Run focused red-team exercises against AI-specific abuse cases and convert findings into repeatable tests, stronger platform patterns, and actionable guidance.
• Build runtime protection. Use end-to-end evidence and behavioral signals to detect abnormal actions, privilege misuse, attempted exfiltration, and degrading controls.
• Strengthen response. Support vulnerability triage and incidents with clear evidence, containment options, recovery actions, and lessons that improve future designs.
• Advise on residual risk. Give product, security, evaluation, and risk leaders concise technical recommendations while keeping approval and risk-acceptance decisions with accountable owners.
• Build shared capability. Create reference implementations, coach engineers, and turn production lessons into reusable controls that make the safer path easier to adopt.

Skills and attributes for success

• Security engineering depth: Strong foundations in application, cloud, platform, identity, data, and software delivery security.
• AI threat judgment: Ability to model how prompts, retrieval, agents, tools, users, and external services create new attack paths and failure modes.
• Control engineering: Experience translating threats into preventive, detective, and responsive measures that engineers can implement and operate.
• Adversarial mindset: Practical skill in red teaming, reproducible testing, vulnerability analysis, detection, and incident learning.
• Automation capability: Ability to build security tests, controls, telemetry, and reference components and integrate them into delivery pipelines.
• Pragmatic influence: Clear communication and product judgment, with the ability to explain risk without drama, vagueness, or implied approval authority.

To qualify you must have

• 5+ years of relevant experience.
• Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant field.
• Relevant experience: Substantial experience in product, application, cloud, platform, or detection security, including hands-on ownership of production controls.
• Threat modeling: Demonstrated ability to assess complex systems and turn attack paths into practical engineering measures.
• Production security: Experience securing modern applications, cloud environments, identities, data, networks, and software delivery pipelines.
• AI systems knowledge: Working understanding of generative and agentic AI, including retrieval, model access, tool use, evaluation, and runtime behavior.
• Hands-on automation: Experience building or extending security tests, controls, telemetry, reference implementations, or adversarial assessments.
• Response experience: Evidence of supporting vulnerability or incident response and translating lessons into stronger technical controls.
• Cross-functional delivery: A record of partnering with engineers and risk functions to improve security while respecting user value and delivery constraints.
• Travel and On-site requirements: This role requires up to 50% travel and flexibility to go into the office in a hybrid capacity. 

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Agentic security: Experience securing tool-using agents, AI gateways, model-serving platforms, retrieval systems, or other high-autonomy applications.
• High-assurance delivery: Experience in regulated, safety-relevant, or multi-region environments with formal evidence and response requirements.
• Detection engineering: Experience designing behavioral analytics and investigation evidence for distributed or AI-enabled systems.
• Supplier and supply-chain risk: Experience assessing external AI services, dependencies, trusted artifacts, and exit or containment options.
• Industry contribution: Practical contributions to AI security research, responsible disclosure, open-source tooling, privacy technology, standards, or professional communities.

We welcome exceptional candidates from product, service design, operations, transformation, policy, domain, and entrepreneurial backgrounds; no particular degree or certification is required.

What we offer you
At EY, we harness our collective strength to empower you to shape your future with confidence through professional growth, personal fulfillment and an inclusive culture. Learn more at ey.com/us/careers.

• We offer a comprehensive compensation and benefits package where you’ll be rewarded based on your performance and recognized for the value you bring to the business.  The base salary range for this job is: 
• • New York City, Boston, and Washington DC Metro Areas, Washington State, and Southern California offices – $128,400 to $192,500
  • Bay Area California offices – $133,600 to $200,600
  • All other offices locations in the US, including Sacramento – $106,900 to $176,500
• Individual salaries within these ranges are determined through a wide variety of factors including but not limited to education, experience, knowledge, skills and geography.  In addition, our Total Rewards package includes medical and dental coverage, pension and 401(k) plans, and a wide range of paid time off options.
• Under our flexible vacation policy, you’ll decide how much vacation time you need based on your own personal circumstances. You’ll also be granted time off for designated EY Paid Holidays, Winter/Summer breaks, Personal/Family Care, and other leaves of absence when needed to support your physical, financial, and emotional well-being.

Are you ready to shape your future with confidence? Apply today.                                              

• To make the most of your application experience, please limit yourself to two applications within a six-month period.
• EY accepts applications for this position on an on-going basis.
• For those living in California, please click here for additional information.
• At EY, our values set the foundation for how we work and the behaviors we expect of our people. Any misrepresentation or falsification of information or lack of integrity at any point in the recruiting process may result in withdrawal of your candidacy, revocation of an offer or immediate termination of employment.

EY  |  Building a better working world

EY is building a better working world by creating new value for clients, people, society and the planet, while building trust in capital markets.

Enabled by data, AI and advanced technology, EY teams help clients shape the future with confidence and develop answers for the most pressing issues of today and tomorrow.

EY teams work across a full spectrum of services in assurance, consulting, tax, strategy and transactions. Fueled by sector insights, a globally connected, multi-disciplinary network and diverse ecosystem partners, EY teams can provide services in more than 150 countries and territories.

All in to shape the future with confidence.

EY provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, pregnancy, genetic information, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other legally protected basis, including arrest and conviction records, in accordance with applicable law.  

EY is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities including veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and either need assistance applying online or need to request an accommodation during any part of the application process,  please call 1-800-EY-HELP3, select Option 2 for candidate related inquiries, then select Option 1 for candidate queries and finally select Option 2 for candidates with an inquiry which will route you to EY’s Talent Shared Services Team (TSS) or email the TSS at [email protected].