Security engineer, detection and response

WRITER•San Francisco, CA

2d•$132,000 - $240,000•Onsite

About The Position

Join WRITER's security team as a detection and response engineer protecting its AI infrastructure, platform, training data, and model deployments. The role focuses on building sophisticated detection systems for evolving AI-specific threats and developing automated response capabilities that scale with the company’s growth. This position combines hands-on security engineering with strategic threat response. The engineer translates threat intelligence into real-time detections, coordinates incident response across teams, and proactively hunts threats across GPU clusters and distributed training environments. The role works closely with AI Security research, Cloud Infrastructure, Software Security Engineering, and AI researchers to develop defense-in-depth protections for WRITER’s AI platform. The position may be based in WRITER’s San Francisco or Seattle office and reports to the head of security operations. WRITER is open to hiring at multiple levels, with compensation ranges scaled to experience, expertise, and scope.

Requirements

3–5+ years of experience in security operations, detection engineering, or incident response, with a track record of identifying and stopping sophisticated attacks in production environments.
Experience securing AI/ML infrastructure, high-performance computing environments, or other distributed systems at scale.
Strong programming skills in Python, KQL, SPL, or similar languages for custom detection logic, automated response workflows, and security tools.
Experience with SIEM platforms, detection technologies, and forensic investigation techniques.
Ability to develop detections for novel attack techniques without established patterns and conduct forensics in complex distributed environments.
Self-directed execution and a track record of securing high-value intellectual property, automating incident response in complex environments, and finding security gaps through proactive threat hunting.
Ability to collaborate across security, infrastructure, and AI research teams, challenge assumptions, and take accountability for protecting the AI platform.

Responsibilities

Design and implement detections for AI-specific threats, including prompt injection, model extraction, data poisoning, adversarial examples, and unauthorized access to training datasets or model weights.
Build automated response playbooks and orchestration workflows that contain threats, reduce response times, and remediate compromised inference endpoints.
Coordinate security incident response across Cloud, AppSec, Enterprise, and AI Security teams; investigate training pipeline attacks and model manipulation; and communicate incidents to engineering and executive leadership.
Proactively hunt threats across GPU clusters and training infrastructure, analyze model outputs for signs of compromise, reproduce AI-specific vulnerabilities, and identify visibility gaps in distributed training environments.
Build detection-as-code frameworks with version control and automated deployment; onboard telemetry from AI training infrastructure and inference endpoints; and create dashboards for model security, GPU utilization, and access to sensitive research data.
Partner with AI Security, Cloud Infrastructure, Software Security Engineering, and other teams to operationalize threat research, monitor infrastructure, detect customer-impacting incidents, and enable responsible AI development with security guardrails.
Participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation for critical AI security incidents and continually improve detection coverage and automation.

Benefits

Generous paid time off and company holidays.
Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their families.
16 weeks of paid parental leave for all parents.
Fertility and family planning support.
Early-detection cancer testing through Galleri.
Flexible spending account and dependent care FSA options.
Health savings account for eligible plans, with a company contribution.
Annual wellness stipend for expenses such as gym, massage, chiropractic care, and personal training.
Annual learning and development stipend.
Company-wide and team off-sites.
Competitive compensation, company stock options, and 401(k).