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Cybersecurity

Forward Deployed Security Engineer

OpenAI · Washington, DC · full-time · Hybrid

Cybersecurityfull-timeHybridWashington, DC$266K – $445K
Security
RemoteJobs editorial overview

Strategic Overview

Forward Deployed Security Engineer at OpenAI is a cybersecurity opportunity centered on the specialist responsibilities and outcomes described in the employer's listing.

The published role emphasizes work such as Deeply embed with our most strategic public sector customers to implement and maintain robust security controls. Be a design and technical thought partner by leveraging security expertise on protective controls including access controls, authentication,…

The role is listed for Washington, DC with hybrid working arrangement, giving candidates the practical context needed to assess fit before applying. Relevant signals in the listing include Security.

Job seeker snapshot

Key information at a glance

Role focusCybersecurity
LocationWashington, DC
WorkplaceHybrid
Employmentfull-time
Experience5+ years
Salary$266K – $445K
PostedMay 21, 2026
Last seenOct 25, 2026
Role context

About This Role

About the Team

Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers,…

About the Role

What the role delivers

Key Responsibilities & Objectives

  • Deeply embed with our most strategic public sector customers to implement and maintain robust security controls.
  • Be a design and technical thought partner by leveraging security expertise on protective controls including access controls, authentication, encryption, network, and system security.
  • Collaborate closely with teammates, cross-functional teams, customers, and service providers to achieve security and compliance goals.
Candidate blueprint

Required Qualifications & Candidate Blueprint

  • Familiarity with deployment models, including to cloud platforms (Azure, AWS) and the underlying infrastructure primitives (Kubernetes, Terraform)
  • A proven track record of developing high-quality, scalable, and secure infrastructure.
  • Experience with security operations including insider threat monitoring, network/endpoint detection and response, or red team or penetration testing operations.
Compensation & benefits

Salary & Benefits

Published compensation: $266K – $445K

Live market comparison

Salary Benchmark

This role’s published compensation is compared with current employer-disclosed salary ranges for the same role in the same currency.

This job$266K – $445K
Current market range$520 – $510,000
Comparable jobs48

Benchmark uses active employer job postings in our database and excludes this listing. It is not a third-party salary estimate, and currencies are not converted.

Employer-provided source content

Full Job Description

The following is the complete job description supplied by the source. We sanitize unsafe markup and remove external links, but do not shorten or rewrite the employer's source content.

About the Team

Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture.

About the Role

Our technologies support some of the most important and impactful work in the world, including our strategic and high-impact customers in the public sector. As a Forward Deployed Security Engineer (FDSecE) you will be responsible for securing these novel applications of OpenAI’s technology. We’re looking for motivated, tenacious, and curious people who will work closely with engineering teams to ensure our infrastructure deployments are highly secure against our adversaries.

As an FDSecE, you will embed directly throughout the lifecycle, working on-site and being hands-on to ensure the overall security of these deployments from design to production and through ongoing operations.

This role is preferred to be based in Washington DC but may consider remote work. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. Travel to and working from customer sites is required for this role.

In this role, you will:

  • Deeply embed with our most strategic public sector customers to implement and maintain robust security controls.

  • Be a design and technical thought partner by leveraging security expertise on protective controls including access controls, authentication, encryption, network, and system security.

  • Collaborate closely with teammates, cross-functional teams, customers, and service providers to achieve security and compliance goals.

  • Ensure continuity of critical security and monitoring controls through routine security assessments, threat monitoring, and security validation exercises.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

  • An active US security clearance.

  • 5+ years of security engineering experience, with an emphasis on infrastructure security, application security, network security, datacenter security, and systems engineering.

  • Familiarity with deployment models, including to cloud platforms (Azure, AWS) and the underlying infrastructure primitives (Kubernetes, Terraform)

  • Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Golang, or similar.

  • A proven track record of developing high-quality, scalable, and secure infrastructure.

  • Experience with security operations including insider threat monitoring, network/endpoint detection and response, or red team or penetration testing operations.

  • Comprehensive knowledge of modern adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures.

  • The ability to work collaboratively and effectively in a cross-functional team environment.

  • Thrive in dynamic environments and can navigate ambiguity with ease.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

RemoteJobs original analysis

Editor’s Market Perspective (Our Custom Analysis)

Why This Position Matters

This cybersecurity opening is a useful opportunity for candidates whose experience matches Security. Its strongest career signal is the scope of the work itself — particularly Deeply embed with our most strategic public sector customers to implement and maintain robust security controls. — rather than a generic title alone.

Resume & Application Strategy

For the application, mirror the employer's language where it truthfully matches your background: foreground Security, quantify outcomes from comparable work, and place the most relevant experience near the top of the resume. If the listing specifies tools, platforms, leadership scope, or domain experience, use those exact terms in context instead of presenting an unrelated keyword list.

Source transparencyashby

We organize source-provided information into this independent job-seeker overview. Compensation is shown only when the source provides it; the official listing remains the authority for current requirements and application instructions.