Director, AI Engineering

Job Description

Director of AI Engineering

This is a rare opportunity to lead and scale a global AI Center of Excellence at the heart of a company focused on solving some of the world’s most complex cybersecurity challenges. As Director, you’ll lead the development of innovative AI solutions that empower organizations to proactively detect, respond to, and prevent security risks and threats in real time.

About the Role

You’ll play a critical leadership role, responsible for not just development, but also for driving cross-functional strategy, execution, and risk management. You’ll partner closely with leaders across the business to turn AI innovation into meaningful, secure customer outcomes.

You’ll lead a high-caliber team of Data Scientists, AI Engineers, MLOps Engineers, and Software Engineers, with a strong foundation already in place and ready to scale globally. The team is responsible for production-level AI systems spanning a broad range of approaches—from building custom machine learning models and fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) to leveraging LLMs out of the box. New this year, the team is also building a company-wide agentic AI platform. This is your opportunity to shape a high-impact, high-ownership culture and define how AI powers the future of security at Rapid7.

In this role, you will:

• You will set the vision and execution strategy for the AI Center of Excellence, ensuring scalable, secure, and impactful outcomes

• You will collaborate across functions including Product, Engineering, User Experience, Information Security, Legal and others to align AI work with company priorities

• You will lead end-to-end development of AI solutions, from research and prototyping to production deployment

• You will guide the team in balancing speed with quality, always maintaining a high bar for impact and reliability

• You will scale and manage a globally distributed team of top-tier Data Scientists, AI Engineers, MLOps Engineers and Software Engineers.

• You will help establish a culture of technical excellence, strategic thinking, and data-informed decision-making

The skills you’ll bring include:

• 10+ years of experience in data science, machine learning, or AI, with at least 5 years in a leadership role

• Proven track record of building and leading high-performing, cross-functional AI or ML teams at scale

• Strong experience driving AI/ML product development from research through to production deployment

• Deep understanding of the AI/ML lifecycle, including model development, MLOps, experimentation, and monitoring

• Experience partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and executive leadership to shape strategy and influence outcomes

• Strong background in managing risk, prioritizing initiatives, and aligning technical work with business goals

• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical audiences

• Experience working in cybersecurity or a similarly complex, fast-paced domain is a plus

• Comfort operating in global, matrixed organizations and building teams across geographies

We know that the best ideas and solutions come from multi-dimensional teams. That’s because these teams reflect a variety of backgrounds and professional experiences. If you are excited about this role and feel your experience can make an impact, please don’t be shy – apply today.

About Rapid7

At Rapid7, we are on a mission to create a secure digital world for our customers, our industry, and our communities. We do this by embracing tenacity, passion, and collaboration to challenge what’s possible and drive extraordinary impact.

Here, we’re building a dynamic workplace where everyone can have the career experience of a lifetime. We challenge ourselves to grow to our full potential. We learn from our missteps and celebrate our victories. We come to work every day to push boundaries in cybersecurity and keep our 11,000+ global customers ahead of whatever’s next.

Join us and bring your unique experiences and perspectives to tackle some of the world’s biggest security challenges.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other status protected by applicable national, federal, state or local law.