7AI is the first agentic security platform that harnesses the speed and power of AI to finally give defenders the advantage over evolving threats.
Philip Royer, Security Engineer, shares everything you need to know about working on the 7AI Security Engineering team!
During this video interview, Philip discusses:
Introduction to 7AI and Security Automation
7AI is a rapidly growing agentic security automation platform that leverages large language models and artificial intelligence to enhance security operations. The company focuses on giving defenders a significant advantage over evolving threats by introducing unprecedented flexibility and scale to the security automation sector. For tech job seekers in Boston, 7AI presents an opportunity to work at the intersection of generative AI, software engineering, and cybersecurity.
The Security Engineering Function at 7AI
The security engineering team at 7AI works closely with software engineers and customers to ensure that the platform’s AI models execute investigative actions that mirror the reasoning of expert security analysts. The function involves a blend of core capabilities:
- Prompt Engineering: Designing highly sophisticated prompts to guide AI models through blue team and red team scenarios.
- Software Engineering: Integrating tools and data systems to support the AI engine.
- Security Analysis: Applying domain expertise in threat analysis, query construction, and incident response to instruct the AI engine on how to investigate alerts.
Unlike traditional roles where analysts filter out high volumes of alerts due to capacity constraints, security engineers at 7AI build systems designed to investigate all incoming alerts autonomously, eliminating the traditional scaling limitations of security operations centers.
Strategic Shift from Traditional SOAR to 7AI AI-Driven Models
Security automation at 7AI represents a foundational shift from traditional Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) playbooks. Historically, automation required writing explicit, line-by-line code for every possible outcome and scenario, which failed to scale across multi-domain environments.
The core approach at 7AI allows expert security knowledge to be encoded directly into an AI engine. By using weighted large language models, the platform evaluates alerts within the specific context of an organization without requiring custom scenario-specific code. This allows the system to replicate human analytical reasoning at an unconstrained scale.
The Interview Process for 7AI Security Engineers
The interview loop at 7AI focuses on practical, real-world capabilities rather than purely abstract or academic exercises. The assessment evaluates how candidates approach foundational security challenges:
- Practical Alert Analysis: Candidates are given actual security alerts to observe how they investigate threats using standard security operations tools.
- AI Orchestration: Discussions focus on how candidates would instruct and leverage AI models to discover underlying security anomalies.
- Technical Query Language Proficiency: Evaluation of a candidate’s ability to construct precise queries across multiple standard security languages to extract key data during an investigation.
- Automator Mindset: Strong emphasis on programmatic thinking and automated workflows. While deep software development is encouraged, the primary requirement is the ability to conceptualize investigations through structured query logic.
Career Impact for Security Professionals Joining 7AI
Joining the engineering team at 7AI allows cybersecurity professionals to move away from the traditional constraints of internal corporate security teams. In a standard corporate security operations center, the function often operates as a cost center where analysts spend significant time manually processing repetitive alerts.
At 7AI, the security engineering function sits at the center of the business model. Engineers have the opportunity to encode their hard-won domain experience directly into scalable AI software, allowing their insights and automation strategies to protect hundreds of enterprise customer environments simultaneously.
