Staff Security Engineer - AI Security

About Rivian

Rivian is on a mission to keep the world adventurous forever. This goes for the emissions-free Electric Adventure Vehicles we build, and the curious, courageous souls we seek to attract.


As a company, we constantly challenge what's possible, never simply accepting what has always been done. We reframe old problems, seek new solutions and operate comfortably in areas that are unknown. Our backgrounds are diverse, but our team shares a love of the outdoors and a desire to protect it for future generations.


Role Summary

As a Security Engineer at Rivian, you will spearhead the adversarial evaluation of our AI-enabled features and internal platforms. This role will operate across Offensive Security, Secure Architecture, and AI/ML. You will act as one of Cybersecurity Assurance's primary authorities on AI-related risk. You will independently evaluate, challenge, and validate the safety and integrity of these AI initiatives.

You will both break and build, applying attacker mindset & adversarial thinking to challenge the assumptions in our entire AI ecosystem, while simultaneously creating the automated tools and guardrails needed to continuously expose and mitigate critical risks.


Responsibilities

1. Adversarial Evaluation (The "Breaker")

• AI Red Teaming: Design and execute deep, unconstrained adversarial assessments on our applied AI systems (e.g., voice assistants, RAG services, AI agents), testing safety boundaries and guardrails through offensive security assessments
• Challenge Assumptions: Push AI guardrail mechanisms beyond their intended limits. Your goal is to determine exactly when and how these controls fail, proving the difference between a system's expected behavior and its actual resilience against an attacker
• Assess Agentic Workflows: Evaluate multi-agent and LLM-integrated workflows for complex risks such as privilege escalation, unsafe action chaining, direct/indirect prompt injection, and other unintended side effects.

2. Engineering & Automation (The "Builder")

• Automate adversarial testing: Build AI-driven frameworks to scale our Red Teaming and vulnerability discovery. You will leverage LLMs, anomaly detection, and corpora of attack prompts to enhance our automated coverage.
• Build Cross-Functional Tooling: Design and operate AI-driven security agents and automated frameworks that amplify the efforts of our broader Cybersecurity organization.
• Co-Design Defenses: Partner closely with engineering teams to brainstorm, review & validate remediations for the gaps you find

3. Cross-Functional Influence (The "Advocate")

• Scale AI Security Practices: Threat model AI architectures (LLMs, vector stores, data flows) and build frameworks for continuous AI-driven adversarial testing that scale across all product teams.
• Proactive Security Research: Stay ahead of the curve. Spend time researching new AI attacks and prototyping guardrails to see if they work in our environment.
• Foster Security Culture: Collaborate within a cross-functional team to develop relationships, influence senior stakeholders, and drive alignment on AI risk tolerance and mitigation priorities

Qualifications

• Adversarial Mindset: Experience working in Offensive Security, Red Teaming, Vulnerability Research, Penetration Testing or adjacent role, with a demonstrated ability to evaluate complex systems with the mindset of a determined attacker to find meaningful business impact
• AI/ML Fluency: Deep understanding of generative AI systems, including RAG pipelines, large language models, vector databases, and multi-agent orchestration frameworks, and their specific security failure modes You don't just know what "Indirect Prompt Injection" is, you know how to bypass filters to achieve it.
• Engineering Proficiency: Hands-on experience building, testing, or securing applications using Python/Go. You are familiar with modern ML frameworks (like PyTorch, Hugging Face, or LangChain) and bring practical experience utilizing specialized AI red teaming tools (such as Garak or PyRIT).
• Courage & Clarity: You are unafraid to challenge assumptions or expose uncomfortable truths in service of system safety, and skilled at communicating high-impact risks clearly to executives and technical peers
• Adversarial Depth: Bonus points if you have contributed to the security or AI community through open-source tools, research, or vulnerability disclosures that demonstrate your depth in adversarial thinking

Pay Disclosure

Salary Range for this role is $140,600 - $175,800 for Georgia based applicants. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, specific competencies, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, shift, and organizational needs.

The successful candidate may be eligible for annual performance bonus and equity awards.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits for full-time and part-time employees, their spouse or domestic partner, and children up to age 26, including but not limited to paid vacation, paid sick leave, and a competitive portfolio of insurance benefits including life, medical, dental, vision, short-term disability insurance, and long-term disability insurance to eligible employees. You may also have the opportunity to participate in Rivian's 401(k) Plan and Employee Stock Purchase Program if you meet certain eligibility requirements. Full-time employee coverage is effective on their first day of employment. Part-time employee coverage is effective the first of the month following 90 days of employment. More information about benefits is available at rivianbenefits.com.

Equal Opportunity

Rivian is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information or characteristics, physical or mental disability, marital/domestic partner status, age, military/veteran status, medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Rivian is committed to ensuring that our hiring process is accessible for persons with disabilities. If you have a disability or limitation, such as those covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, that requires accommodations to assist you in the search and application process, please email us at View email address on click.appcast.io.

Candidate Data Privacy

Rivian may collect, use and disclose your personal information or personal data (within the meaning of the applicable data protection laws) when you apply for employment and/or participate in our recruitment processes ("Candidate Personal Data"). This data includes contact, demographic, communications, educational, professional, employment, social media/website, network/device, recruiting system usage/interaction, security and preference information. Rivian may use your Candidate Personal Data for the purposes of (i) tracking interactions with our recruiting system; (ii) carrying out, analyzing and improving our application and recruitment process, including assessing you and your application and conducting employment, background and reference checks; (iii) establishing an employment relationship or entering into an employment contract with you; (iv) complying with our legal, regulatory and corporate governance obligations; (v) recordkeeping; (vi) ensuring network and information security and preventing fraud; and (vii) as otherwise required or permitted by applicable law.


Rivian may share your Candidate Personal Data with (i) internal personnel who have a need to know such information in order to perform their duties, including individuals on our People Team, Finance, Legal, and the team(s) with the position(s) for which you are applying; (ii) Rivian affiliates; and (iii) Rivian's service providers, including providers of background checks, staffing services, and cloud services.


Rivian may transfer or store internationally your Candidate Personal Data, including to or in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union and in the cloud, and this data may be subject to the laws and accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of such jurisdictions.


Please note that we are currently not accepting applications from third party application services.