Distinguished Engineer, AI Security Systems (Remote) in Sunnyvale, California at CrowdStrike, Inc.

CrowdStrike, Inc.
Full time

As a global leader in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern organizations. Since 2011, our mission hasn’t changed — we’re here to stop breaches, and we’ve redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced AI-native platform. We work on large scale distributed systems, processing almost 3 trillion events per day and this traffic is growing daily. Our customers span all industries, and they count on CrowdStrike to keep their businesses running, their communities safe and their lives moving forward. We're proud to work for a mission-driven company leveraging AI to transform the way we work. CrowdStrikers drive their careers through flexibility and autonomy while also being expected to contribute to a culture of responsible AI adoption, experimentation, and innovation. We use an AI-first mindset as a force multiplier to proactively and continuously accelerate execution, build expertise, uncover insights, and solve complex problems. We’re always looking to add talented CrowdStrikers to the team who have limitless passion, a relentless focus on innovation and a fanatical commitment to our customers, our community and each other. Ready to join a mission that matters? The future of cybersecurity starts with you.

About the Lab:

AI is changing cyber offense and defense simultaneously. Adversaries use models to inspect code, hunt vulnerabilities, adapt tooling, and conduct longer operations. CrowdStrike built the Cybersecurity Superintelligence Lab to ensure defenders stay ahead.

The Lab is CrowdStrike’s frontier AI research organization for cyber defense. Its work spans frontier and open-weight models, CrowdStrike-trained models, specialized agents, reinforcement learning, evaluation, and secure deployment.

The Lab combines trillions of Falcon events each day, more than a decade of adversary intelligence, expert-validated outcomes, and high-fidelity environments where offensive and defensive AI can attack, defend, learn, and prove what works in real enterprise environments.

About the Role:

We are seeking a Distinguished Engineer who has built AI and security systems that operate in the real world and stop real adversaries.

You may have worked on the endpoint, where every millisecond, megabyte, and CPU cycle matters, or at cloud scale, where systems reason over trillions of events and design decisions affect cost, latency, and efficacy across millions of protected assets. Ideally, you understand both.

As one of the Lab’s most senior technical leaders, you will architect systems that turn frontier AI into autonomous, trustworthy cyber defense—from the sensor to the cloud. You will write code, design experiments, set technical direction across research and engineering teams, and carry breakthroughs into the Falcon platform.

If you have shipped AI that stops adversaries in production and want to build what comes next, we want to talk.

What You’ll Do:

• Architect the Lab’s AI security systems end to end, including models, agents, security telemetry, tools, execution environments, on-sensor inference, and cloud-scale reasoning.
• Bring frontier AI to the endpoint using distillation, quantization, compact and specialized models, and integration with kernel- and user-mode telemetry.
• Build cloud-scale streaming detection and inference systems across trillions of events per day, with GPU-efficient serving, intelligent model routing, and disciplined control of cost, latency, and reliability.
• Build autonomous defenders that investigate, hunt, write and validate detections, and drive response and remediation.
• Create systems that learn from investigations, adversary emulation, simulations, expert feedback, reinforcement learning, post-training, reward modeling, and synthetic data.
• Engineer for adversarial conditions, including evasion, poisoning, prompt injection, tool abuse, sandboxed execution, and autonomous action in customer environments.
• Establish benchmarks, cyber ranges, and evaluation harnesses measuring efficacy, false-positive cost, reliability, latency, and spend.
• Lead through technical depth by working on the hardest problems, mentoring principal-level engineers and research scientists, and aligning cross-functional teams.
• Carry research into production in the Falcon platform, solving the scale, safety, and operability challenges required for customer-grade capabilities.
• Represent CrowdStrike through publications, open-source work, standards, and collaboration with frontier AI labs, universities, and the security research community.

What You’ll Need:

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field; PhD preferred.
• 15+ years of industry experience in software engineering, machine learning, or security engineering; 12+ years with a PhD.
• 8+ years at a senior technical leadership level, such as Principal, Distinguished, or equivalent.
• A track record of architecting, building, and shipping production AI or ML systems for security, on the endpoint or at cloud scale.
• Hands-on expertise with large language models and agentic architectures, including planning, tool use, memory, context management, post-training, reward modeling, and inference optimization.
• Deep security expertise in areas such as detection and response, threat hunting, malware analysis, vulnerability research, adversary tradecraft, or security automation.
• Expert-level proficiency in one or more of C, C++, Rust, Go, or Python.
• Deep experience with distributed systems, high-throughput data infrastructure, and GPU inference stacks such as vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, Triton, or SGLang.
• Scientific rigor and the ability to form hypotheses, establish credible baselines, design meaningful experiments, and follow the evidence.
• A record of setting technical vision, raising the bar for senior engineers and researchers, and communicating complex tradeoffs clearly.
• Proven experience using AI technologies to improve decision-making, streamline workflows and processes, increase efficiency, and drive business outcomes.

Bonus Points:

• Cybersecurity industry experience across endpoint, cloud, identity, SIEM, or threat intelligence.
• Experience at a frontier AI lab in pre-training, post-training, reinforcement learning, inference, evaluation, or safety.
• Experience with adversarial machine learning, AI red teaming, autonomous cyber reasoning systems, or AI-driven offensive security.
• Experience building extensible AI or agentic platforms that enable teams to safely develop, evaluate, optimize, and deploy AI applications at scale.
• Recognized technical contributions, including publications, patents, influential open-source projects, or conference talks spanning AI and security.

Why Join the Lab:

• Work on frontier technology with real-world consequences, protecting organizations that keep economies, hospitals, and critical infrastructure running.
• Access trillions of daily Falcon events, deep adversary intelligence, and high-fidelity cyber environments.
• Help define the technical culture, architecture, and standards of a new frontier lab.
• Collaborate with AI researchers, offensive operators, threat hunters, and incident responders who understand how real attacks happen and how they are stopped.

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Benefits of Working at CrowdStrike:

• Market leader in compensation and equity awards

• Comprehensive physical and mental wellness programs

• Competitive vacation and holidays for recharge

• Paid parental and adoption leaves

• Professional development opportunities for all employees regardless of level or role

• Employee Networks, geographic neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to build connections

• Vibrant office culture with world class amenities

• Great Place to Work Certified™ across the globe

CrowdStrike is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging where everyone is valued for who they are and empowered to succeed. We support veterans and individuals with disabilities through our affirmative action program.

CrowdStrike is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment. The Company does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, creed, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy or pregnancy-related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical disability (including HIV and AIDS), mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, membership or activity in a local human rights commission, status with regard to public assistance, or any other characteristic protected by law. We base all employment decisions--including recruitment, selection, training, compensation, benefits, discipline, promotions, transfers, lay-offs, return from lay-off, terminations and social/recreational programs--on valid job requirements.

If you need assistance accessing or reviewing the information on this website or need help submitting an application for employment or requesting an accommodation, please contact us at recruiting@crowdstrike.com for further assistance.

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Notice of E-Verify Participation

Right to Work

CrowdStrike, Inc. is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. Placement within the pay range is dependent on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications, job level, supervisory status, and location. The base salary range for this position for all U.S. candidates is $235,000 - $350,000 per year, with eligibility for bonuses, equity grants and a comprehensive benefits package that includes health insurance, 401k and paid time off.

For detailed information about the U.S. benefits package, please click here.

Expected Close Date of Job Posting is:12-22-2026