--- title: 'Founding Machine Learning Engineer at Adaptive Security' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-machine-learning-engineer-adaptive-security-new-york-hghvcyvtg4t6' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-08' --- # Founding Machine Learning Engineer at Adaptive Security - **Company:** Adaptive Security - **Location:** New York, NY - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-09-02 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/adaptivesecurity/547fef33-6371-4a49-9085-5810744f95b0 ## Job description ## ABOUT ADAPTIVE NVIDIA and OpenAI’s only AI cybersecurity investment. Adaptive is a cybersecurity startup on a mission to stop AI-powered cyberattacks. In December 2025, the company announced an $81M Series B led by NVIDIA and Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Capital One Ventures, Citi Ventures, and continued support from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the OpenAI Startup Fund, and Abstract Ventures. The round marked NVIDIA’s first AI cybersecurity investment. Adaptive was founded by Brian Long and Andrew Jones, repeat entrepreneurs who have built and scaled category-defining companies. Brian and Andrew previously co-founded Attentive, which grew to more than $500M in annual revenue and a $10B+ valuation, and TapCommerce, which was acquired by Twitter. Together, they bring deep experience building high-growth, product-led businesses at massive scale as Adaptive builds the security layer for the AI era. Trusted by leading banks, technology companies, and healthcare organizations, Adaptive protects teams from emerging threats like deepfakes, smishing, and AI-powered voice scams. With rapid enterprise adoption and a $200B+ market ahead, the company is just getting started. ## ROLE We are seeking our 2nd ML Engineer to define and build Adaptive's ML capabilities. Our products use LLMs and ML models to detect, classify, and respond to cybersecurity threats in real time. The ML problems here are adversarial by nature. Attackers actively evolve to evade detection, labeled data is scarce for novel attack vectors, and models need to operate at production scale with strict latency constraints. We don't have dedicated ML infrastructure or an ML team today. You'll be building this from the ground up. You will set the technical direction, stand up the infrastructure, and do the hands-on work yourself. You’ll be instrumental in growing the function as our ML surface area expands this year and beyond. ## COMPENSATION Adaptive has raised $146M from top-tier investors including BCV, a16z, NVIDIA, and OpenAI. Our roadmap depends on standing up an ML function that doesn’t yet exist, and we’re ready to compensate accordingly. Expect market level compensation and huge ownership over the ML platform from day one. ## RESPONSIBILITIES - Define Adaptive's ML strategy: where ML should be applied across our products, what infrastructure we need, and how we should approach build vs. buy decisions. - Design and build production ML systems end-to-end — data pipelines, model training, evaluation frameworks, and inference serving. - Establish evaluation methodology. Define how we measure model quality, catch regressions, and make data-driven decisions about model changes. - Own the strategy for getting the data you need, in the format you need it — what/how to label, how to build feedback loops, and how our models improve over time. - Partner with product engineers to integrate ML into the product. You will write production code and work within our existing codebase. - Build and lead the ML team as scope grows. ## QUALIFICATIONS - 4+ years of experience building ML systems in production, ideally with experience standing up the ML function at an early stage startup or as the senior or lead ML person at a previous company. - Strong software engineering fundamentals. You write production-quality code in modern languages (Python, Java, TypeScript) and work within large codebases. - Experience with cloud ML infrastructure (AWS SageMaker, Bedrock, Modal, Baseten, or similar). - Experience with common ML and data processing frameworks (PyTorch, Tensorflow, Spark) - Comfortable working across the stack — infrastructure, backend services, and data systems. - High autonomy. You'll have support and context from leadership, but you're expected to define the path forward and drive it. ## COMPENSATION & BENEFITS: - Competitive cash compensation and meaningful stock. - Several medical plans to choose from, most covered at 100% by Adaptive. - 401k through Vestwell. - Unlimited PTO, including winter break from Dec 24 - Jan 1. - A fantastic office atmosphere including coffee, espresso, lounge, snacks, whiteboards, and tons of conference space. - Rotating choice of 4 free lunch options from local restaurants every day. - Expense dinner if you’re in the office past 7pm. Expense Uber if you happen to stay past 9pm. ## About Adaptive Security ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Adaptive Security is a next-generation security awareness and AI phishing simulation platform that protects organizations from AI-powered threats such as deepfakes, vishing, smishing, and spear phishing. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B; total funding $145M+) - **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States (also offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco) - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Brian Long and Andrew Jones ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Computer and Network Security (security awareness training and human risk monitoring) - **Target customers**: B2B, serving enterprises and SMBs (700+ customers including Figma, Major League Baseball, PayPal, and Plaid) - **Mission**: “Redefining what it means to protect organizations in the age of AI” – building a next-generation security platform to meet AI-driven threats ## Products & Services - **Security Awareness Training Platform**: Interactive, scenario-based modules that build real-world skills in security, compliance, and AI-driven threats. Training can be personalized to each employee and includes hyper-realistic AI executive deepfakes and company OSINT. - **Phishing Simulations (Email, SMS, Voice)**: Multi-channel simulations powered by AI and OSINT, including custom AI personas and spear phishing campaigns that mirror real attacker techniques. Voice phishing (vishing) is supported with recent upgrades. - **Phish Reporting Button with AI-Powered Triage**: Employees can flag suspicious messages while AI handles triage at scale. - **Dynamic Risk Scoring**: Quantifies individual and organizational risk using real user behavior. - **Executive Exposure Monitoring**: Identifies risks through OSINT analysis that require immediate attention. - **AI Content Creator**: Allows admins to customize any training module in seconds using natural language. - **Integrations**: Seamless connections with existing tech stacks (e.g., SIEM, HR platforms). ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed - **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$145M+**, with a $55M Series A in May 2025 led by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI Startup Fund, followed by a Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures (amount undisclosed) - **Notable Investors**: NVIDIA, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Bain Capital Ventures - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount grew from 36 to ~200 in one year (+224.7% YoY) - Operates in 7 countries (US, UK, Australia, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Bangladesh) - Average product rating of 4.9/5 stars with a Net Promoter Score of 94 - Customers include well-known brands such as Figma, PayPal, Plaid, and Major League Baseball ## Competitive Advantages - **AI-native platform**: Built from the ground up to address AI-powered threats rather than adapting legacy tools. - **Hyper-realistic simulations**: Uses publicly available OSINT and deepfakes of a company’s own executives to create the most convincing phishing tests. - **Personalized risk remediation**: Automatically launches custom training and simulations based on each employee’s risk profile. - **Founder expertise**: Co-founders previously built Attentive (SMS marketing platform worth hundreds of millions) and TapCommerce (acquired by Twitter), giving them deep experience in personalization and scaling software. ## Strategic Focus - Continuing to expand the platform’s capabilities for AI-driven threat detection and response (e.g., voice phishing, deepfake detection). - Scaling globally – already active in 7 countries with plans to grow further. - Deepening integrations with enterprise security stacks and HR platforms. - Hiring aggressively across engineering, sales, customer success, and machine learning roles. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Emphasizes “Human-First, Always” and “Move Faster than Threats.” The team is described as engineers, operators, former founders, and security practitioners who have built products in high-stakes environments. - **Work model**: Offices in New York (HQ), Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Likely hybrid/flexible (company culture page mentions “how we work” but does not mandate full remote – candidates can check specific roles). - **Benefits**: - Competitive salary + meaningful equity - 100% covered medical, dental & vision - Unlimited PTO - Unlimited budget for workstation + learning - Snacks, drinks & catered meals - Commuter benefit - **Engineering culture**: Focus on builders – speed is a core value (“Attackers iterate daily. So do we.”). Team includes senior engineers and machine learning specialists. - **Growth**: Explosive headcount growth (200+ employees in ~18 months) signals a fast-scaling environment with career advancement opportunities. ## Sources 1. [adaptivesecurity.com](https://www.adaptivesecurity.com/) 2. [adaptivesecurity.com/careers](https://www.adaptivesecurity.com/careers) 3. [adaptivesecurity.com/about](https://www.adaptivesecurity.com/about) 4. [linkedin.com/company/adaptivesecurity](https://www.linkedin.com/company/adaptivesecurity) 5. 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