Applied AI Architect, Cyber
OpenAI is hiring an Applied AI Architect, Cyber for a remote role open to applicants in United States. It pays $295k-$345k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on OpenAI.
Level's read on this job
- Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this cybersecurity role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- Pay on this posting starts 85% higher than the typical cybersecurity posting on Level.
- This is listed as a remote role.
- The posting mentions AI agents and AI research among its tools and skills.
- OpenAI has 793 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
About the team
The Applied AI Architecture team is responsible for helping developers and enterprises safely and effectively deploy OpenAI technologies in production. We act as trusted technical advisors and thought partners for customers, working side by side with their teams to identify high-value use cases, design practical architectures, and move from prototype to durable deployment.
Cybersecurity is one of the most urgent domains where AI can help. Security teams are under pressure to reason across code, logs, infrastructure, tickets, alerts, and vulnerability data faster than ever. As frontier models become more capable, organizations need deep technical guidance on how to evaluate, validate, and safely deploy AI systems in security-critical workflows.
About the role
We are looking for a Cybersecurity Applied AI Architect to partner with customers and help them apply OpenAI models, APIs, Codex, and agentic workflows to real cybersecurity use cases. You will work with CISOs, security executives, application security leaders, SOC teams, security engineering teams, and hands-on practitioners to identify where AI can create measurable security outcomes.
This is a customer-facing technical role for someone who can move fluidly between executive strategy, practitioner-level cyber depth, and hands-on solution design. You will help customers evaluate and deploy workflows such as secure code review, vulnerability triage, threat modeling, remediation, SOC and incident response workflows, detection engineering, cloud security, GRC automation, and security validation.
You will collaborate closely with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Product, Engineering, Research, and Security to turn customer needs into safe deployment patterns, reusable field assets, and product feedback. This role is based in our San Francisco HQ. We offer relocation support to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Deeply embed with strategic customers as the technical lead for AI-enabled cybersecurity workflows, serving as a trusted partner to both security executives and technical practitioners.
Lead discovery across AppSec, DevSecOps, vulnerability management, SOC/IR, detection engineering, red team, cloud security, identity, and GRC automation use cases.
Build and deliver customer-facing demos, prototypes, workshops, proofs of concept, and reference architectures using OpenAI APIs, Codex, agents, scripts, CLIs, GitHub workflows, CI/CD systems, logs, tickets, scanners, and common security tools.
Scope pilots with clear success criteria, data requirements, workflow integrations, evaluation methods, security constraints, safety boundaries, and human approval points.
Advise customers on safe implementation patterns, including tool and function calling, structured outputs, retrieval, sandboxing, data handling, guardrails, telemetry, auditability, and approval-gated side effects.
Translate between CISO-level outcomes and practitioner-level implementation details so each audience understands value, risk, and practical next steps.
Create reusable field assets such as demo narratives, playbooks, FAQs, objection handling, qualification guides, assessment templates, and competitive positioning.
Validate, synthesize, and deliver high-signal feedback to Product, Engineering, Research, Security, and GTM teams based on recurring customer requirements, blockers, product gaps, and emerging cyber workflows.
You'll thrive in this role if you:
Have 5+ years of technical consulting, solutions engineering, security architecture, cyber advisory, deployment engineering, professional services, or equivalent customer-facing technical experience.
Bring strong cybersecurity domain expertise across one or more areas such as application security, cloud security, identity, vulnerability management, secure SDLC, incident response, detection engineering, threat intelligence, red teaming, or security architecture.
Can communicate credibly with CISOs, CTOs, security executives, engineering leaders, and highly technical security practitioners.
Have hands-on experience building prototypes or production systems with APIs, Python or JavaScript, agents, scripts, CLIs, GitHub workflows, CI/CD systems, logs, tickets, scanners, or other common security tooling.
Understand how to design AI workflows with retrieval, structured outputs, tool use, evals, guardrails, telemetry, sandboxing, and human-in-the-loop review.
Are comfortable scoping pilots from ambiguous customer pain, including success metrics, required data, workflow integrations, evaluation criteria, deployment assumptions, and decision gates.
Have evidence-first security judgment: you validate findings, separate true positives from noise, document assumptions, and avoid overstating model or security claims.
Own problems end-to-end, operate with high throughput across multiple concurrent customer projects, and know when to stay hands-on versus create reusable leverage for the broader field.
Have a humble attitude, an eagerness to help colleagues, and a desire to do whatever it takes to make the team and our customers successful.
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.
How we rate this
Applied AI Architect, Cyber at OpenAI rates 75 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in cybersecurity jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $295k
- Typical cybersecurity job
- $159k
This posting starts 85% above the typical cybersecurity job. See cybersecurity jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Tell me about a research question you investigated. What did you find?
- Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
- If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents and AI Research. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
Want an expert to read your CV for this job?
Free. Send your CV and the role you want next. We reply by email within 2 to 4 business days.
Get new remote cybersecurity jobs (Works on AI ●●●○ or higher) by email
One email a week with the new remote cybersecurity jobs (Works on AI ●●●○ or higher), each rated for how much AI is in the work. No recruiter spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
Similar roles
Software Engineering roles that work on AI, at other companies.
What kind of AI work fits you?
Answer 12 practical questions in about three minutes. Get a simple profile, the work it points to, and live roles to explore next.
Find my next step