Senior Security Engineer

THE OPPORTUNITY

Apollo Research works with most frontier AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Thinking Machines and others) to test their models before deployment and collaborate on fundamental scheming research. Our coding agent security product, Watcher, is deployed in production and monitors billions of agent tokens per month across engineering teams at agent-building scale-ups and enterprises.


Security exists at Apollo to safeguard the trust our lab partners place in us and to enable that research. Our own team runs around 400 billion tokens a month through AI agents, which makes Apollo both a target and a testbed. We're hiring Security Engineers to join the Infra & Security Team.


In this role, you will design, implement, and deploy the security controls that keep Apollo secure, and make the secure path the default path for everyone. You will build the security layer for a novel insider risk that didn't exist before.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design, build, and operate Apollo's core security controls: identity and access management, infrastructure and cloud security, endpoint management, and incident response.
• Build paved roads that make the secure path the default, easy path
• Establish and advocate for security practices across Apollo, and build the organizational trust needed for people to adopt them, communicating security decisions and tradeoffs clearly along the way.
• Evaluate vendors and tooling, make build-vs-buy calls on security infrastructure, and assess vendor security posture before adoption.
• Lead major security projects end to end, from ideation through implementation and rollout.
• Collaboratively define and shape the security roadmap and priorities.

KEY REQUIREMENTS

Must-haves

• 5+ years in security roles in a hands-on technical capacity (not purely GRC/compliance). You'd need to be able to think structurally about threat modeling and failure modes. You need to be able to read code, understand infrastructure, and evaluate technical controls.
• Engineering mindset. You treat security as an engineering problem. You are capable of, and willing to, build custom solutions when the task demands it, rather than relying on 'glueing' together off-the-shelf tools. You prioritize automation and systems-level thinking to scale security, and you are comfortable leveraging AI to accelerate development.
• Direct experience with application security, cloud security, or product security. Ideally you've owned or significantly contributed to the security posture of an organisation that handles sensitive customer data.
• Influence without authority. You have a track record of building buy-in for security practices and being trusted by non-security people.
• Startup pace. You are excited about a fast-moving environment, comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities, and willing to grind when it matters.

Nice-to-haves

• Software engineering experience
• We would be excited to have candidates who have the one or more of these specialisations:
  • Zero-trust architectures
  • Sandboxing
  • Detection engineering
  • GRC engineering
  • Incident response
  • Endpoint management (Kandji, Jamf, or similar)
  • Identity/access management

Explicitly not required

• Deep AI/ML security or LLM-specific expertise
• Formal AI safety research background. We need security practitioners who can learn the AI safety context, not AI safety researchers who need to learn security.

We want to emphasize that people who feel they don't fulfill all of these characteristics but think they would be a good fit for the position, nonetheless, are strongly encouraged to apply.

REPRESENTATIVE PROJECTS

• Zero trust migration: Design and deliver an incremental path from Apollo's current cloud architecture toward zero trust, including hands-on implementation and deployment reducing the blast radius if any single credential, device, or agent is compromised.
• Agentic SOC: Design and build an internal agentic SOC from scratch; automate triage and investigation of security alerts so detection coverage scales with Apollo's growing use of AI agents.
• Sandbox hardening: Review Apollo's sandboxing infrastructure; propose and implement changes that improve security while minimizing impact on researcher productivity.
• Third-party access review: Implement a lean, streamlined access review process for third-party software that people will actually use.
• Incident response: Lead an incident response effort end to end: containment, root cause, and the post-mortem that turns it into a durable fix.
• Pentesting tooling: Decide which agentic pentesting solution Apollo will use, and whether to build or buy.

BENEFITS

• This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
• Salary: San Francisco : $214,000 - $280,000; London : £144,000 - £189,000. We will be looking to meaningfully raise salaries soon.
• Our engineers effectively have an unlimited token budget. If a better result costs more compute, use it.
• 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 (e.g. 401(k) for US employees)
• 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)

LOGISTICS

• Time Allocation: Full-time
• Location: This is an in-person role working out of our London or San Francisco office. We offer flexible working hours and some wfh arrangements.
• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas in both the UK and US. Sponsorship isn't guaranteed for every role or candidate, but if we make you an offer, we'll work with you to find the right visa route.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Infra and Security team is currently led by Rusheb Shah and consists of Glen Rodgers and Steven Lee. You will work closely with Security Researchers we're hiring for as well as technical staff from the Scheming Research and Product team. You can find our full team here.
ABOUT APOLLO RESEARCH

The rapid rise in AI capabilities offers tremendous opportunities, but also presents significant risks. At Apollo Research, we're primarily concerned with risks from Loss of Control, i.e. risks coming from the model itself rather than e.g. humans misusing the AI. We're particularly concerned with deceptive alignment / scheming, a phenomenon where a model appears to be aligned but is, in fact, misaligned and capable of evading human oversight.


We work on the science of scheming, detection of scheming (e.g. building evaluations), and scheming mitigations (e.g. anti-scheming). We also work on control and monitoring research (see our scalable monitoring agenda). We work closely with many frontier AI companies, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Thinking Machines and others, e.g. to test their models and collaborate on the science of scheming. At Apollo, we aim for a culture that emphasizes truth-seeking, being goal-oriented, giving and receiving constructive feedback, and being friendly and helpful. If you're interested in more details about what it's like working at Apollo, you can find more information here.

We also build a coding agent security product called Watcher that secures agent deployments in companies. Our goal is to reduce the probability of catastrophic incidents by securing coding agents, learning about their real-world risks, and publishing our research on how to build these control systems most effectively.

Equality Statement: Apollo Research is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity and are committed to providing equal opportunities to all, regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.
HOW TO APPLY

Please complete the application form with your CV. The provision of a cover letter is neither required nor encouraged. Please also feel free to share links to relevant work samples.

About the interview process: Our multi-stage process includes a screening interview, a take-home test (approx. 2-3 hours), 3 technical interviews, and a final interview with Marius (CEO). There are no leetcode-style general coding interviews. You may use AI tools on the take-home; we judge the result the way we'd judge any contributor's work, so you are responsible for the quality of everything you submit. If you want to prepare, we suggest building simple monitors for coding agents and running them on your own Claude Code / Cursor / Codex / etc. traffic.

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. 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 [email protected].