New opportunity

Principal Security Engineer - AI

Seven AI · Boston, United States

About this role

Seven AI seeks a Principal Security Engineer - AI to lead AI-driven cybersecurity defense and help determine where AI can reliably handle detection, investigation, and response versus where human oversight remains necessary. The role shapes platform strategy across cloud and enterprise environments and works directly with customers transforming their security operations. The platform combines a federated SIEM, AI agents, threat hunting, and threat intelligence.

Responsibilities

Lead incident response strategy, detection engineering, automated response, threat hunting, threat research, and security automation.
Partner with product, engineering, and research teams to shape the platform roadmap and AI security solutions.
Assess customers’ security posture and processes and guide their adoption of AI-driven security operations.
Build and automate realistic attack simulations, adversary emulation scenarios, and large-scale security environments.
Provide technical leadership and mentorship in security best practices, automation design, and incident response methodology.

Requirements

15+ years of cybersecurity experience, including significant time in SOC, Blue Team, detection engineering, threat hunting, or incident response roles; strong experience with SOAR platforms and security automation frameworks.
Deep understanding of modern security operations, attacker methodologies, and enterprise security architectures, including endpoint, identity, cloud, and networking security.
Hands-on coding experience with Python or similar languages and experience working directly with customers.
Strong problem-solving, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills, plus genuine interest in AI-driven security operations and autonomous defense systems.

This is a full-time, hybrid role in Boston, MA. The posted annual base salary range is $200K–$230K, with equity offered; final offers vary based on experience, skills, and interview performance.

For full details about this role, click “Apply on company site” to view the employer’s original posting.

Skills for this role

Incident ResponseDetection EngineeringThreat HuntingThreat ResearchSecurity AutomationAutomated ResponseSOARPythonAttack SimulationAdversary EmulationSecurity OperationsBlue TeamEnterprise Security ArchitectureEndpoint SecurityIdentity SecurityCloud SecurityNetwork SecurityCustomer CollaborationTechnical LeadershipMentorshipProblem SolvingCommunicationCross-functional Collaboration

Checking your profile…

Preparation suggestions, not the employer’s actual interview questions. Always check the original posting for current requirements.

Understand the role

What matters most

Set the AI–human boundary
Posted responsibility: Decide where AI can reliably handle detection, investigation, and response, and where a human must remain involved. Preparation suggestion: Be ready to explain how you would assess reliability and decide when to escalate.
Lead security operations design
Posted responsibility: Lead incident response strategy, detection engineering, automated response, threat hunting, threat research, and security automation. Preparation suggestion: Connect these activities into an operational approach rather than discussing them as separate specialties.
Shape the platform across teams
Posted responsibility: Work with product, engineering, and research to shape the roadmap and AI security solutions across cloud and enterprise environments. Preparation suggestion: Prepare an example of turning a security-operations need into a technical priority.
Guide customer adoption
Posted responsibility: Understand customers’ security posture and processes and guide their AI security transformation. Preparation suggestion: Explain how you would adapt technical guidance to a customer’s existing operations.
Build realistic tests and develop others
Posted responsibilities: Automate attack simulations, adversary emulation, and large-scale security environments; provide mentorship on automation and incident response. Preparation suggestion: Be ready to describe how a simulation informs defensive improvements and how you communicate those lessons.

Likely challenges to think through

Automation versus safe oversight
Possible challenge, not a confirmed employer problem: Greater AI autonomy could reduce analyst work but make an incorrect response more consequential. Prepare a framework for choosing which actions can run automatically and which need human review.
Consistency across varied environments
Possible challenge, not a confirmed employer problem: Detection and response approaches may need to work across endpoint, identity, cloud, and network contexts without assuming identical data or controls. Prepare to explain how you would identify those differences before designing automation.
Realism versus repeatability in testing
Possible challenge, not a confirmed employer problem: Large-scale adversary simulations need to resemble attacker behavior while remaining repeatable enough to evaluate defenses. Prepare to describe how you would select scenarios and interpret what their results do—and do not—demonstrate.

Practice your answers

Technical practice

Where should AI act autonomously in detection, investigation, and response, and where should a human stay in the loop?

What to coverThe role explicitly calls for making this distinction. Suggested preparation (inferred): explain how confidence, potential impact, reversibility, and escalation paths would inform each decision.

How would you design a detection workflow around a federated SIEM?

What to coverThe posting describes a platform pairing a federated SIEM with AI agents. Suggested preparation (inferred): discuss data access, correlation across sources, detection latency, and the trade-offs between querying data in place and moving it.

How would you develop and assess a detection spanning endpoint, identity, cloud, and network activity?

What to coverThe role requires detection engineering and understanding of these four security domains. Suggested preparation (inferred): walk through attacker behavior, required signals, validation against benign activity, and how you would tune false positives.

How would you lead an investigation from an initial alert through an incident-response decision?

What to coverIncident response strategy and AI-assisted investigation are stated responsibilities. Suggested preparation (inferred): cover evidence gathering, scoping, uncertainty, prioritization, and the point at which an analyst should review or direct the response.

What would you automate through SOAR, and what safeguards would you put around automated response?

What to coverThe posting calls for strong SOAR experience and leadership in security automation. Suggested preparation (inferred): address reliable triggers, idempotency, failure handling, auditability, and approval thresholds for consequential actions.

How would you turn threat intelligence and attacker methodologies into a useful threat hunt?

What to coverThreat hunting, threat research, and attacker methodologies are all named in the posting. Suggested preparation (inferred): describe a testable hypothesis, relevant telemetry, investigation steps, and how findings would feed back into detections.

How would you build an adversary-emulation scenario to test defensive capabilities?

What to coverBuilding and automating realistic attack simulations is a stated duty. Suggested preparation (inferred): explain how you would select representative behaviors, keep the exercise controlled, measure detection and response, and use gaps to guide improvements.

How would you use Python or a similar language to automate security testing at scale?

What to coverThe role asks for hands-on coding and automated, large-scale security environments. Suggested preparation (inferred): outline a test harness for repeatable scenarios, including input validation, reproducibility, logging, and safe cleanup.

How would you evaluate whether an AI agent improves SOC outcomes?

What to coverThe posting centers on AI agents that detect, investigate, respond, and hunt. Suggested preparation (inferred): propose representative cases and measures such as correctness, time to actionable findings, analyst effort, and harmful or missed actions.

How would you assess a customer's security posture before recommending AI-driven operations?

What to coverWorking directly with customers to understand their posture and processes is a stated responsibility. Suggested preparation (inferred): discuss available telemetry, existing workflows, response authority, operational constraints, and how those findings would shape a staged recommendation.

Behavioural practice

Tell me about a time you guided a customer through a consequential change to security operations.

What to coverDirect customer collaboration and guidance are part of the role. Suggested preparation (inferred): use a real situation, explain how you learned the customer's constraints and what you did, then describe the observable result without overstating it.

Describe a time you aligned product, engineering, and security stakeholders on a technical priority.

What to coverThe role collaborates with product, engineering, and research on platform direction. Suggested preparation (inferred): give the situation, your actions to surface trade-offs and resolve disagreement, and the resulting decision or outcome.

Tell me about an incident where you had to make a response decision with incomplete information.

What to coverThe posting calls for incident-response leadership and sound judgment about human oversight. Suggested preparation (inferred): explain the situation, the action you took to manage uncertainty and risk, and the result or lesson.

Describe a time you mentored others on detection, automation, or incident-response practices.

What to coverTechnical leadership and mentorship in these areas are stated duties. Suggested preparation (inferred): identify the situation and the actions you took to develop others' judgment, then explain what changed as a result.

Tell me about a time testing or threat research changed your team's defensive approach.

What to coverThe role includes threat research, adversary emulation, and improving security solutions. Suggested preparation (inferred): give a real situation, describe the evidence you found and how you acted on it, then state the resulting defensive change.

Sharpen your knowledge

Topics to prepare

AI autonomy and human oversight
Posting: The role decides where AI can reliably detect, investigate, and respond, and where humans remain in the loop. Suggested exercise: For three hypothetical alert types, define evidence thresholds for autonomous action, human review, and escalation; explain how you would evaluate errors.
SOC detection and threat hunting strategy
Posting: The role leads detection engineering, threat hunting, and threat research. Suggested exercise: Trace an attacker scenario from available signals to a detection, an investigation path, and a hypothesis-driven hunt; identify likely blind spots.
Incident response and SOAR design
Posting: The role leads incident response strategy and automated response, and calls for strong SOAR and security automation experience. Suggested exercise: Diagram an incident workflow with decision points, response actions, and conditions for human approval.
Enterprise security architecture
Posting: The role requires understanding of enterprise architectures and security across endpoint, identity, cloud, and networking. Suggested exercise: Map how evidence from those four areas could corroborate a suspected compromise, noting visibility gaps.
Security operations platform strategy
Posting: The platform pairs a federated SIEM with AI agents, threat hunting, and threat intelligence; the role shapes its roadmap with product, engineering, and research. Suggested exercise: Draft a one-page proposal for improving an investigation workflow, explaining the security outcome and cross-team trade-offs.

Skills to revise

Python security automation
Posting: Hands-on coding in Python or a similar language is required. Suggested exercise: Write a small program that normalizes sample security events, groups related activity, and produces a reviewable investigation summary; test malformed inputs.
Adversary emulation and simulation
Posting: The role builds and automates realistic attack simulations, adversary emulation scenarios, and large-scale security environments. Suggested exercise: Specify a bounded attacker scenario, generate representative activity, and check whether the intended detection and response path triggers.
Automated response workflow implementation
Posting: Security automation and automated response are core duties, and SOAR experience is sought. Suggested exercise: Prototype a response workflow using a SOAR platform or security automation framework you know; include approval gates, failure handling, and an audit trail.
Customer security posture discovery
Posting: The role works directly with customers to understand their security posture and processes and guide AI-security adoption. Suggested exercise: Rehearse a discovery conversation that elicits current investigation steps, available data, and response constraints, then summarize a phased recommendation without assuming automation is always appropriate.

Your preparation checklist

Map evidence to the role
The posting seeks 15+ years in cybersecurity, substantial SOC, Blue Team, detection, hunting, or incident response work, and strong SOAR experience. Prepare a one-page map of relevant roles, decisions, and outcomes without overstating your experience.
Build an incident-response walkthrough
The role leads incident response, detection engineering, hunting, threat research, and automated response. Prepare one case showing the signal, investigation, detection changes, response decisions, and results.
Sketch AI and human decision boundaries
The posting says this role determines where AI can reliably detect, investigate, and respond versus where humans remain involved. As a preparation exercise, diagram one SOC workflow with escalation points, failure cases, and ways to check its reliability.
Prepare an adversary-emulation scenario
The role includes automating realistic attack simulations and large-scale security environments. Outline a scenario spanning relevant endpoint, identity, cloud, or network signals, with expected detections and a way to evaluate them.
Show a security-automation example
The posting asks for SOAR and automation-framework experience plus hands-on Python or similar coding. Prepare a code or architecture walkthrough covering inputs, response actions, safeguards, and how the automation was tested.
Rehearse customer and leadership examples
The role works directly with customers and with product, engineering, and research teams, while providing mentorship. Prepare distinct examples of assessing a customer's security processes, influencing a technical decision, and helping others improve a practice.
Draft questions about platform tradeoffs
The posting describes a federated SIEM, AI agents, threat hunting, and threat intelligence. Prepare questions about how the team measures reliable AI decisions, handles human oversight, and prioritizes customer needs in the roadmap.

Availability last checked: Nov 4, 2026. Status can change after a check; confirm on the employer’s website. Report an issue · Our checking policy

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