Distinguished Engineer (DE) for AI & Product Security

Workday • Pleasanton, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Distinguished Engineer (DE) for AI & Product Security is a pivotal, hands-on technical leadership role responsible for defining and driving the security strategy across our core product portfolio, with a special emphasis on the security lifecycle of AI technologies, Large Language Models (LLMs), and cloud-native applications. This role ensures security is fundamentally built into new technologies and will serve as the top technical expert driving architectural decisions and security governance across the organization.

Requirements

• Experience: 12+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Infrastructure, or Product Security, with at least 5 years operating at a Principal/Staff level or higher.
• Expertise: Deep, demonstrable expertise in the security implications of cloud-native architectures (Kubernetes, Serverless) and a strong command of modern AI/ML development frameworks and security concerns.
• Architecture: Proven history of designing security controls that scale across large, heterogeneous production environments.
• Compliance: Extensive experience architecting products to meet global regulatory and industry standards, including GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC 2. Must have a proven track record of translating complex compliance mandates into automated technical controls and "compliance-as-code" within a CI/CD pipeline, specifically addressing emerging AI regulations (e.g., EU AI Act) and data residency requirements.
• Communication: Exceptional ability to translate complex technical risks into business impact for executive audiences and the Board of Directors.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with advanced security analytics and threat modeling for complex distributed systems.
• Active participation in AI security research or industry working groups

Responsibilities

• AI/ML Security Architecture and Strategy (40%) Secure AI/MLSDLC: Define and evangelize the secure Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for all AI/ML models and applications, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of training data, model weights, and inference results.
• LLM Governance and Control: Design and implement architectural patterns and tooling to manage and restrict the flow of proprietary data into and out of external, commodity LLMs.
• Adversarial AI Defense: Develop novel security countermeasures against prompt injection, model inversion, data poisoning, and other advanced adversarial machine learning attacks targeting our products.
• AI Safety: Guide the team in creating auditable and safety-aligned standards for internal AI tools (e.g., Sana AI).
• Product and Cloud Security Leadership (30%) Architectural Review: Lead the most complex and sensitive security reviews for critical products and services.
• Defense in Depth: Modernize on the company’s Zero Trust model implementation strategy, guiding engineering teams on micro-segmentation, identity-based access, and least-privilege principles within product infrastructures.
• Mentorship, Influence, and Research (30%) Technical Advocacy: Act as the primary technical voice for Cybersecurity & Trust, representing the security organization in cross-functional working groups, executive forums, and with external parties.
• Mentorship: Mentor senior and principal engineers across engineering teams, raising the collective security bar and fostering a culture of secure development.
• External Research: Maintain deep expertise in emerging AI and Product threats and contribute to the external security community through patents, publications, or industry standards development.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees