Apollo Research
AI Security & Control Researcher/Engineer
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THE OPPORTUNITY
We are building Watcher, a coding agent security product. We are looking for a security & control expert to help us design better threat models and control protocols against AI adversaries, and improve the effectiveness and security of Watcher.
A security & control expert embedded in the product team with three functions:
- Research (50%): Supporting Apollo's monitoring research with threat modeling, attack design, red-teaming, and trajectory analysis.
- Expert view (25%): Bring a security expert’s view of what security buyers need to make Watcher a better product.
- Product security (25%): Improve the security posture of Watcher and Apollo's product infrastructure.
This is truly a “start-up role” in the sense that you have many responsibilities and have significant say in shaping the direction of the role. This is an individual contributor role but could lead to management responsibilities eventually, if desired.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
SECURITY SUPPORT FOR RESEARCH (50%)
-
Threat Modeling for Coding Agents:
- Develop threat models for coding agents under the assumption that they could be misaligned or compromised.
- Map out kill chains and attack progressions similar to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, adapted for agentic AI.
- Build and maintain our “coding agent security levels” which define what level of robustness Watcher provides against different categories of failure modes.
-
Failure Mode Library and Literature:
- Maintain our library of coding agent failure modes and keep it comprehensive, accurate, and current.
- Stay up to date with the academic and industry literature on coding agent security, AI security, and adjacent fields.
-
Attack Design for Monitor Development:
- Design realistic attack trajectories and example exploits for monitor development and backtesting.
-
Trajectory Adjudication:
- Serve as security adjudicator for flagged trajectories.
-
Red-Teaming Watcher:
- Red-team and improve Watcher's monitors and policies, document findings, and feed them into product improvement.
- Work with the technical research staff to build adversarial test suites into the backtesting pipeline.
SECURITY EXPERTISE FOR PRODUCT (25%)
-
Failure Mode Prioritization and CISO Perspective:
- Understand which failure modes are the biggest problems and prioritize what is most useful to solve for security buyers.
-
Customer Engagement and Landscape Awareness:
- Join customer/prospect calls to understand security needs firsthand and map them onto the threat models and library of failure modes.
- Maintain awareness of how enterprises currently secure coding agents (or don't), what tools they use (SIEM, DLP, CSPM), and how Watcher fits into their existing stack.
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- Customer-Facing Security Artifacts:
- Own security questionnaire responses, product security whitepapers, and support for customer pen-tests.
- Own technical content of customer-facing communications during incidents.
IMPROVING SECURITY POSTURE FOR PRODUCT (25%)
-
Attack Surface, Infrastructure, and Isolation:
- Own AppSec standards for the product engineering team.
- Own vendor security decisions for product.
- Reduce attack surface for all product-related deployments and ensure clean isolation between the Apollo Product team and other teams at Apollo.
-
Data Handling and Multi-Tenancy:
- Define security requirements for tenant isolation, encryption at rest/in transit, access controls, and data retention policies for customer coding agent transcripts with the product engineering lead.
-
Product Threat Model and Incident Response:
- Co-own the product-specific threat model with the product team lead and keep it up to date.
REPRESENTATIVE PROJECTS
- Develop a comprehensive coding agent threat model.
- Improve our database of failure modes.
- Prioritize failure modes that Watcher should cover.
- Design a security roadmap for keeping customer data for Watcher secure.
JOB REQUIREMENTS
MUST-HAVES
- 5+ years in security roles in a hands-on technical capacity.
- Engineering mindset: Treat security as an engineering problem.
- Direct experience with application security, cloud security, or product security.
- Strong understanding of enterprise security buyer concerns.
- Comfortable working in a small, fast-moving team.
- Strong written communication.
STRONG NICE-TO-HAVES
- Experience with AI/ML systems security, LLM security, or AI control research.
- Detection engineering, SOC, or incident analysis experience.
- Familiarity with insider threat programs or insider risk frameworks.
- Experience in a security vendor or security product company.
- Red teaming or offensive security background.
- Formal AI safety research background.
EXPLICITLY NOT REQUIRED
- Management experience.
- Specific certifications.
BENEFITS
- Market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
- Salary: 135k - 200k GBP (~180k - 270k USD)
- Flexible work hours and schedule
- Unlimited vacation
- Unlimited sick leave
- Up to 6 months of paid parental leave
- Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance
- Retirement savings with competitive employer matching
- Lunch, dinner, and snacks are provided for all employees on workdays
- Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences
- A yearly $1,000 (USD) professional development budget
- Relocation support and visa fees (if applicable)
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LOGISTICS
- Time Allocation: Full-time
- Location: In-person role working out of our London or San Francisco office. Flexible working hours and some wfh arrangements.
- Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas in both the UK and US.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The Product / Control team is a new team. Especially early on, you will work closely with:
- Marius Hobbhahn (CEO & currently leads the monitoring team)
- Victor Gillioz (Research Scientist)
- Monika Jotautaitė (Research Scientist)
- Our product engineers: Jeremy Neiman, Zak Walters, Zen van Riel, and Srdjan Miletic
Furthermore, you will interact with our other SWEs and researchers, since we intend to be “our own customer” by using our products internally for our research work.
ABOUT APOLLO RESEARCH
At Apollo Research, we are concerned with risks from Loss of Control, particularly deceptive alignment / scheming. We work on the detection of scheming, the science of scheming, and scheming mitigations. We closely work with multiple frontier AI companies.
We are developing tools and products (see Watcher) that make it easier to prevent harms from widely deployed AI systems.
Equality Statement: Apollo Research is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
HOW TO APPLY
Please complete the application form with your CV. The provision of a cover letter is optional. Please also feel free to share links to relevant work samples.
About the interview process:
- Screening interview
- Take-home test (approx. 2 hours)
- 3 technical interviews
- Final interview with Marius (CEO)
The technical interviews will be closely related to tasks the candidate would do on the job. There are no leetcode-style general coding interviews.
Your Privacy and Fairness in Our Recruitment Process
We are committed to protecting your data, ensuring fairness, and adhering to workplace fairness principles in our recruitment process. To enhance hiring efficiency, we use AI-powered tools to assist with tasks such as resume screening. These tools are designed and deployed in compliance with internationally recognized AI governance frameworks. Your personal data is handled securely and transparently. We adopt a human-centred approach: all resumes are screened by a human and final hiring decisions are made by our team. If you have questions about how your data is processed or wish to report concerns about fairness, please contact us at info@apolloresearch.ai.
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