About Security Level 5

Security Level 5 is a Bay Area AI security nonprofit working with AI labs and US intelligence agencies to defend frontier models from priority nation-state-level threats. We move fast, and we're tripling headcount this year.

The Mission

We're hiring for what's plausibly the most difficult, urgent, and interesting challenge in AI security engineering this decade (for humans, at least): designing and building the first datacenter purpose-built to Security Level 5, the standard for defending frontier AI labs against attackers with the resources of a nation-state and billion-dollar budgets. We're working on the first SL5 components this year and aiming for an at-scale SL5 datacenter build in 2027.

We wrote the first version of the standard with input from CISOs and senior security staff at the frontier labs, and US security and intelligence officials. Now we're designing the SL5 architectures purpose-built for frontier AI workloads, and standing up the reference tech stack to guide labs' buildouts. This stack has to hold against nation-states, not destroy researchers' productivity, not cost more than labs can pay, and ship in 2-3 years.

What you'd work on

Designing and operating the network fabric of the environment: switch configuration, segmentation and the controlled links between the SL5 network, Weight Enclave and other segments in the air-gapped network. This may involve working on an egress bandwidth limiter, building the gateways / tunnels for remote media stations and remote users and more.
Owning the identity and trust layer: the signing / PKI service (or its baked-key alternative), domain services and audit logging.

You'd be a fit if you

Have experience turning a trust boundary on paper into an enforced one in practice, e.g. configuring segmentation / egress controls and verifying via counters, logs or testing.
Have run identity, PKI / code signing or similar services in an on-prem or disconnected environment.
Can employ a security mindset to ensure properties of a design are translated to reality.

Logistics

Bay Area, in-person. This role's base salary range is $200,000 - $350,000 USD per year. We may be open to paying exceptional and/or highly experienced employees more than this. We also provide full benefits, including healthcare, dental, vision, 401k match, and more.

About the company

SL5 Task Force is a nonprofit that develops practical security standards to protect frontier AI from nation-state threats. It creates the SL5 Standard, an overlay to existing frameworks (like NIST SP 800-53 and ICD 705) that provides technical controls and implementation guidance, delivered through two tracks: an Executive Track for decision-makers and a Technical Track for security researchers, with working groups on machine, network, physical, personnel, and supply chain security. The organization differentiates itself through a multistakeholder approach that includes AI labs, national security leaders, data center operators, and chip providers, and by offering an actionable roadmap that bridges current practices with higher-security measures and threat modeling, prototyping, and cost-benefit analyses (e.g., Project MoAT and AI705). Its goal is to achieve nation-state grade protection for frontier AI and to build a functional prototype datacenter with leading AI labs by 2026.

Company Size

1-10

Company Stage

N/A

Total Funding

N/A

Headquarters

N/A

Founded

N/A

Get referred to Security Level 5

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

NIST's July 2026 workshop featured SL5 and AI705, signaling institutional traction.
SL5 is hiring across engineering, national security, and recruiting, showing rapid scaling.
The standard's 2028/2029 optionality framing aligns with urgent frontier-lab procurement cycles.

What critics are saying

SL5 has only four employees on Built In, limiting execution capacity.
The 2027 datacenter build needs labs, chips, and facilities alignment before competitors move.
If frontier labs reject SL5, the nonprofit becomes a standards paper without deployment.

What makes Security Level 5 unique

SL5 published a 60-control standard, anchored in NIST SP 800-53 and ICD 705.
Lisa Thiergart leads a rare cross-functional team spanning labs, government, and datacenter operators.
SL5 targets nation-state-grade AI infrastructure, not generic enterprise cybersecurity.

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Benefits

Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
401(k) Company Match

Security Level 5

Network Engineer

About the job