Principal Engineer, Security AI Tooling and Automation

TransUnion•Chicago, IL

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

TransUnion’s Security Forward Deployed Engineering (SFDE) team deploys engineering effort into high-priority Cyber Defense problem spaces. Embedded across security and engineering, the team brings product context into delivery and connects security intent with engineering implementation. SFDE works across Vulnerability Management, AI Governance, Risk and Compliance, and Risk Intelligence. The Principal Engineer serves as a founding senior engineer in the AI Vulnerability Research and Engineering pod and reports to the SVP, Cyber Defense. This hybrid role requires working virtually and in person at an assigned TransUnion office for at least two days per week. The engineer builds and maintains agentic automation and internal security tooling, integrates security data, automates remediation workflows, and embeds security automation into CI/CD pipelines. The role also owns production reliability and observability for the tooling stack, sets technical direction, mentors engineers, contributes to architecture decisions, and works closely with engineering teams and senior security and engineering stakeholders.

Requirements

At least 8 years of hands-on experience in security engineering, platform engineering, or software engineering, including a strong security engineering component.
Strong background in API integration, data-pipeline engineering, and production-scale internal developer or operator tooling.
Working knowledge of security engineering fundamentals, including vulnerability classes, exploit mechanics, and remediation patterns.
Strong systems thinking and ability to design reliable, observable, maintainable automation; set technical direction; make build-versus-integrate trade-offs; and deliver in a fast-moving embedded team environment.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
Production experience building agentic AI systems or LLM-powered automation frameworks in Python or Go, including tool use, orchestration, and multi-step workflows.
Experience engineering CI/CD pipelines and implementing automated security enforcement gates in software delivery workflows.
Experience designing and operating production integrations, data connectors, normalization pipelines, observability, alerting, state management, retry logic, and failure handling for automation platforms.
Ability to build and maintain internal security tooling, dashboards, remediation-tracking integrations, and automation systems used by security practitioners and engineering teams.

Nice To Haves

Experience building security tooling or vulnerability-intelligence platforms, including internal tools, dashboards, or automation systems used by security practitioners.
Familiarity with agentic AI frameworks and the challenges of operating LLM-powered workflows reliably in production.
Experience with container and image hardening, infrastructure as code (IaC), or runtime security instrumentation.
Background in open-source security tooling, security-research automation, or exploit-validation tooling.
Experience in financial services.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain the agentic automation framework, including orchestration for tool invocation, state management, retry logic, observability, and failure handling across security workflows.
Develop internal security tooling, including vulnerability intelligence interfaces, remediation-tracking integrations, and operator-facing dashboards.
Build and operate API integrations, data connectors, and normalization pipelines to create a coherent, queryable model from disparate security data sources.
Automate remediation initiation and tracking by triggering fix workflows, monitoring remediation state, escalating breached SLAs, and tracking findings through validated resolution.
Embed security automation in CI/CD pipelines with Platform Engineering and DevOps, including automated fix-proposal workflows and pre-production security gates.
Own production observability, alerting, failure handling, and operational health for the tooling stack.
Set technical direction for the automation layer, mentor engineers, contribute to cross-pod architecture decisions, and represent tooling and platform capabilities to senior stakeholders.
Work with engineering teams as an embedded partner, sharing context early, co-owning outcomes, and building trust through delivery and shared accountability.

Benefits

Day-one eligibility for medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus supplemental plan options.
Spousal, domestic partner, and other eligible dependent coverage on select plans.
Tax-advantaged HSA and FSA accounts.
Company-paid basic life and AD&D insurance, optional voluntary life and AD&D coverage, and short- and long-term disability.
Optional legal plan, pet insurance, and travel accident coverage.
Adoption assistance, fertility planning coverage, and caregiver support.
Dependent Care FSA with the possibility of an employer match and a complimentary Care@Work membership.
Up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave, with eligibility for a gradual return.
401(k) with employer match and Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
Financial wellness resources and career coaching.
Optional long-term care insurance.
Tuition reimbursement.
Flexible time off for exempt employees or paid time off for nonexempt employees.
Up to 12 paid holidays per year.
Commuter benefits and employee discounts.
Charitable gift matching and paid volunteer time off, plus corporate volunteer events.
24/7 support including professional therapy, coaching, emotional well-being programs, guided meditation, and resources for physical, mental, social, and financial wellness.
Regular, full-time non-sales positions may be eligible for the annual bonus plan; certain positions may also be eligible for long-term incentives and other payments.