AI & Automation Engineer

About Us Sophos is a cybersecurity leader defending 600,000 organizations globally with an AI-driven platform and expert-led services. Sophos meets organizations wherever they are in their security maturity and grows with them to defeat cyberattacks. Its solutions combine machine learning, automation, and real-time threat intelligence with frontline human expertise from Sophos X-Ops to deliver advanced, 24/7 threat monitoring, detection, and response. Sophos offers industry-leading managed detection and response (MDR) alongside a comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity technologies — including endpoint, network, email, and cloud security, extended detection and response (XDR), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), and next-gen SIEM. Together with expert advisory services, these capabilities help organizations proactively reduce risk and respond faster, with the visibility and scalability needed to stay ahead of evolving threats. Sophos goes to market with a global partner ecosystem, including Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), resellers and distributors, marketplace integrations, and cyber risk partners, giving organizations the flexibility to choose trusted relationships when securing their business. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.
Role Summary
The Senior AI Engineer leads technical design and delivery of AI automation across multiple Security Operations Center (SOC) workflows and services. You will remain hands-on while shaping technical approach, resolving ambiguous requirements, and building capabilities other engineers can reuse. You will partner across teams to improve investigation quality and response time and establish engineering standards.

What You Will Do

• Lead complex initiatives spanning diverse security services teams; resolve design tradeoffs and implement critical components using large language models (LLMs), agents, and retrieval pipelines.
• Define reusable architecture for agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and tool integrations; choose deterministic or model-driven approaches based on evidence, risk, and cost.
• Establish evaluation methods and release criteria across workflows, covering factual accuracy, reliability, false positives, and regressions against validated evidence.
• Design consistent controls for least-privilege access, sensitive data, prompt injection, output validation, and analyst approval of high-impact response actions.
• Lead SIEM, SOAR, XDR/EDR, threat intelligence, and case management integration design; address scale, API failures, and dependencies across services.
• Improve shared Python components, testing, CI/CD, observability, and rollback practices; lead design reviews and coach engineers on difficult implementation decisions.
• Own reliability and measurable outcomes across related workflows, using investigation quality, analyst time saved, success rates, latency, and cost to guide improvements.
• Shape priorities with Security Operations, Threat Research, Data Science, and DevOps; coordinate technical dependencies, resolve production issues, and document architecture and operating standards.

What You Will Bring

Essential
• 7+ years building production software, including 2+ years with LLMs, agents, or applied ML; 1+ year in or alongside a SOC or security team.
• Deep Python and API engineering skills; experience evaluating providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic and open-source models for production use.
• A record of leading architecture and delivery across multiple workflows or services, with reusable designs adopted by other engineers.
• Experience setting AI evaluation and release criteria, diagnosing systemic failure modes, and balancing quality, security, latency, and cost.
• Strong security operations knowledge and experience designing secure integrations, evidence handling, and appropriate analyst oversight for automated response.
• Experience designing and operating distributed or event-driven cloud services, including testing, CI/CD, observability, resilience, and production of incident resolution.
• Ability to turn ambiguous needs into technical plans, influence decisions across teams, and coach senior engineers while remaining hands-on.
Nice to have
• Experience with SQL, Taegis, Sigma detection rules, or mapping detections to MITRE ATT&CK.
• Experience with vector databases, hybrid retrieval, model fine-tuning, or agent orchestration frameworks.
• Background in incident response, network traffic analysis, or Windows event log analysis.
• Experience with containerized or event-driven services, or open-source contributions in security or ML tooling.

Ready to Join Us? At Sophos, we believe in the power of diverse perspectives to fuel innovation. Research shows that candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don't check every box in a job description. We challenge that notion. Your unique experiences and skills might be exactly what we need to enhance our team. Don't let a checklist hold you back – we encourage you to apply. What's Great About Sophos? · Sophos operates a remote-first working model, making remote work the primary option for most employees. However, some roles may necessitate a hybrid approach. While we are a remote first organization, applicants must have legal authorization to work in the jurisdiction where the position is posted, without requiring employer sponsorship. · Our people – we innovate and create, all of which are accompanied by a great sense of fun and team spirit · Employee-led diversity and inclusion networks that build community and provide education and advocacy · Annual charity and fundraising initiatives and volunteer days for employees to support local communities · Global employee sustainability initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint · Global fitness and trivia competitions to keep our bodies and minds sharp · Global wellbeing days for employees to relax and recharge · Monthly wellbeing webinars and training to support employee health and wellbeing Our Commitment To You We’re proud of the diverse and inclusive environment we have at Sophos, and we’re committed to ensuring equality of opportunity. We believe that diversity, combined with excellence, builds a better Sophos, so we encourage applicants who can contribute to the diversity of our team. All applicants will be treated in a fair and equal manner and in accordance with the law regardless of gender, sex, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, color, age, military veteran status, disability, pregnancy, maternity or sexual orientation. We want to give you every opportunity to show us your best self, so if there are any adjustments we could make to the recruitment and selection process to support you, please let us know. Data Protection If you choose to explore an opportunity, and subsequently share your CV or other personal details with Sophos, these details will be held by Sophos for 12 months in accordance with our Privacy Policy and used by our recruitment team to contact you regarding this or other relevant opportunities at Sophos. If you would like Sophos to delete or update your details at any time, please follow the steps set out in the Privacy Policy describing your individual rights. For more information on Sophos’ data protection practices, please consult our Privacy Policy Cybersecurity as a Service Delivered | Sophos