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AI Security Careers

The roles your House of the Machine coursework prepares you for. AI/ML security is a young field with high demand and steep salary curves. Foundations matter (Security+, AI-102) but proven project work matters more.

HOUSE: ALAN TURING DOMAIN: AI & ML SECURITY 8 ROLES
How to use this page. Roles are tagged by seniority (entry, mid, senior, executive). Salary ranges reflect 2026 US market data (BLS, Levels.fyi, Glassdoor). Certifications listed are recognized vendor or industry credentials, not paywalls; many top hires have none of them and a strong GitHub portfolio instead. Read the day-in-the-life sections, they are more honest than job descriptions.
AI Security Analyst
Entry
$70K to $95K
Monitor AI/ML systems for abuse, drift, and policy violations. Triage prompt injection attempts, hallucination reports, and content moderation escalations.
Key Certifications
CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) Microsoft AI-102 AWS AI Practitioner (AIF-C01)
Core Skills
Prompt analysis Log triage LLM basics Content moderation
A Day in the Life
Review overnight abuse queue, label jailbreak attempts, escalate novel attack patterns to the ML team, update guardrail rules, document model behavior anomalies.
Prompt Injection Tester
Entry
$75K to $110K
Specialized offensive role focused on finding ways to manipulate LLM-powered applications. Bug bounty hunters and consulting firms hire heavily here.
Key Certifications
CompTIA PenTest+ (PT0-003) OWASP LLM Top 10 study SANS SEC545 (AI sec)
Core Skills
Prompt crafting Indirect injection RAG poisoning Tool-use abuse System prompt extraction
A Day in the Life
Scope a target chatbot, build a payload library, hunt for tool calls that leak secrets, document reproducible bypasses, file bounty reports, sometimes earn five figures from a single creative payload.
MLOps Security Engineer
Mid
$120K to $170K
Secure the training pipelines, model registries, feature stores, and deployment infrastructure. The DevSecOps role of the AI world.
Key Certifications
AWS Machine Learning Specialty Microsoft AI-102 CKS (Certified Kubernetes Security) CCSP
Core Skills
CI/CD security Model registry hardening Supply chain (SLSA) Container security Secrets management
A Day in the Life
Audit a new model deployment pipeline, sign artifacts with Sigstore, review IAM policies on the feature store, investigate a poisoned training dataset alert, coach ML engineers on secure defaults.
AI Red Teamer
Mid
$130K to $185K
Adversarial testing of AI systems end to end. Combines pentesting, ML knowledge, and creative attack research. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the big banks compete hard for this talent.
Key Certifications
OSCP Microsoft AI Red Team training SANS SEC545 NIST AI RMF practitioner
Core Skills
Adversarial ML Multi-turn jailbreaks Agent abuse chains Data extraction Capability evals
A Day in the Life
Plan an attack campaign against a deployed agent, build a custom eval harness, exfiltrate proprietary system prompts in 200 turns, write up findings for the safety team, brief leadership on the implications.
ML Security Researcher
Senior
$160K to $260K
Publish novel attacks and defenses on model architectures. Lives at the intersection of academic ML research and applied security. Common at frontier AI labs and government research centers.
Key Certifications
MS or PhD in ML or security (typical) Published research record NIST AI RMF
Core Skills
PyTorch, JAX Membership inference Model extraction Differential privacy Federated learning
A Day in the Life
Reproduce a paper, design a new attack on a fine-tuned model, run experiments on a GPU cluster, write a draft for USENIX or IEEE S&P, collaborate with engineering to patch the underlying weakness.
Trustworthy AI Engineer
Senior
$155K to $225K
Build the technical safeguards that make AI systems shippable. Owns guardrails, evaluation pipelines, watermarking, and the safety stack across products.
Key Certifications
Microsoft AI-102 NIST AI RMF practitioner IEEE CertifAIed (assessor)
Core Skills
Evaluation harnesses Guardrail libraries (NeMo, Guardrails AI) Output classifiers Watermarking Red team coordination
A Day in the Life
Triage a new safety eval regression, design a guardrail for medical advice queries, ship a watermarking update, present quarterly safety metrics to product leadership, run a tabletop incident drill.
AI Governance Analyst
Mid
$95K to $140K
Translate AI regulation (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, state laws) into concrete controls. Helps the company answer when an AI use case is permitted, restricted, or forbidden.
Key Certifications
IAPP AIGP (AI Governance Professional) CISA ISO/IEC 42001 Lead Implementer
Core Skills
Regulation mapping AI risk registers Impact assessments Model documentation (model cards) Vendor AI risk review
A Day in the Life
Review a proposed AI feature, complete an EU AI Act risk classification, draft a model card, brief the product team on consent requirements, update the central AI use case registry.
Chief AI Ethics Officer
Executive
$220K to $400K+
Top executive role accountable for AI ethics, safety policy, and responsible deployment across the enterprise. Reports to CEO or board. Common at large banks, healthcare systems, and any company deploying AI at scale.
Key Certifications
IAPP AIGP CISSP or CISM Graduate degree (typical)
Core Skills
Board communication Policy authorship Cross-functional leadership Regulator engagement Crisis response
A Day in the Life
Brief the board on AI risk posture, meet with regulators, chair the responsible AI committee, approve or block high-impact deployments, manage public statements during AI incidents.
RETURN TO
House of the Machine
Modules, labs, games, and the AI-900 certification track.
PLATFORM
Career Launchpad
All cybersecurity domains, paths, certs, and the NICE framework map.
Salary ranges reflect 2026 US market data from BLS, Levels.fyi, and Glassdoor. Exam codes current as of 2026-06.