--- title: 'Security Engineer at Apollo Research' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-apollo-research-london-53m9rf98tb82' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-08' --- # Security Engineer at Apollo Research - **Company:** Apollo Research - **Location:** London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-08-28 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/apolloresearch/855f584d-08dd-4845-93b8-dbeb6737707d ## Job description ## THE OPPORTUNITY Apollo Research works with most frontier AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Thinking Machines and others) to test their models before deployment and collaborate on fundamental scheming research. Our coding agent security product, Watcher, is deployed in production and monitors billions of agent tokens per month across engineering teams at agent-building scale-ups and enterprises. Security exists at Apollo to safeguard the trust our lab partners place in us and to enable that research. Our own team runs around 400 billion tokens a month through AI agents, which makes Apollo both a target and a testbed. We’re hiring Security Engineers to join the Infra & Security Team. In this role, you will design, implement, and deploy the security controls that keep Apollo secure, and make the secure path the default path for everyone. You will build the security layer for a novel insider risk that didn't exist before. ## RESPONSIBILITIES - Design, build, and operate Apollo's core security controls: identity and access management, infrastructure and cloud security, endpoint management, and incident response. - Build paved roads that make the secure path the default, easy path - Establish and advocate for security practices across Apollo, and build the organizational trust needed for people to adopt them, communicating security decisions and tradeoffs clearly along the way. - Evaluate vendors and tooling, make build-vs-buy calls on security infrastructure, and assess vendor security posture before adoption. - Lead major security projects end to end, from ideation through implementation and rollout. - Collaboratively define and shape the security roadmap and priorities. ## KEY REQUIREMENTS Must-haves - 5+ years in security roles in a hands-on technical capacity (not purely GRC/compliance). You'd need to be able to think structurally about threat modeling and failure modes. You need to be able to read code, understand infrastructure, and evaluate technical controls. - Engineering mindset. You treat security as an engineering problem. You are capable of, and willing to, build custom solutions when the task demands it, rather than relying on 'glueing' together off-the-shelf tools. You prioritize automation and systems-level thinking to scale security, and you are comfortable leveraging AI to accelerate development. - Direct experience with application security, cloud security, or product security. Ideally you’ve owned or significantly contributed to the security posture of an organisation that handles sensitive customer data. - Influence without authority. You have a track record of building buy-in for security practices and being trusted by non-security people. - Startup pace. You are excited about a fast-moving environment, comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities, and willing to grind when it matters. Nice-to-haves - Software engineering experience - ## Experience implementing zero-trust architectures - ## Experience with sandboxing - ## Experience with detection engineering - ## Experience with GRC engineering - ## Experience with incident response - Hands-on experience with endpoint management (Kandji, Jamf, or similar) - ## Experience with identity/access management Explicitly not required - Deep AI/ML security or LLM-specific expertise - Formal AI safety research background. We need security practitioners who can learn the AI safety context, not AI safety researchers who need to learn security. ## REPRESENTATIVE PROJECTS - Zero trust migration: Design and deliver an incremental path from Apollo's current cloud architecture toward zero trust, including hands-on implementation and deployment reducing the blast radius if any single credential, device, or agent is compromised. - Agentic SOC: Design and build an internal agentic SOC from scratch; automate triage and investigation of security alerts so detection coverage scales with Apollo's growing use of AI agents. - Sandbox hardening: Review Apollo's sandboxing infrastructure; propose and implement changes that improve security while minimizing impact on researcher productivity. - Third-party access review: Implement a lean, streamlined access review process for third-party software that people will actually use. - Incident response: Lead an incident response effort end to end: containment, root cause, and the post-mortem that turns it into a durable fix. - Pentesting tooling: Decide which agentic pentesting solution Apollo will use, and whether to build or buy. ## BENEFITS - This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits. - Salary: San Francisco: $214,000 – $280,000; London: £144,000 – £189,000. We will be looking to meaningfully raise salaries soon. - Our engineers effectively have an unlimited token budget. If a better result costs more compute, use it. - Flexible work hours and schedule - Unlimited vacation - Unlimited sick leave - Up to 6 months of paid parental leave - Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance - Retirement savings with competitive employer matching (e.g. 401(k) for US employees) - Lunch, dinner, and snacks are provided for all employees on workdays - Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences - A yearly $1,000 (USD) professional development budget - Relocation support and visa fees (if applicable) ## LOGISTICS - Time Allocation: Full-time - Location: This is an in-person role working out of our London or San Francisco office. We offer flexible working hours and some wfh arrangements. - Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas in both the UK and US. Sponsorship isn't guaranteed for every role or candidate, but if we make you an offer, we'll work with you to find the right visa route. ## ABOUT THE TEAM The Infra and Security team is currently led by Rusheb Shah and consists of Glen Rodgers and Steven Lee. You will work closely with Security Researchers we’re hiring for as well as technical staff from the Scheming Research and Product team. You can find our full team here. ## ABOUT APOLLO RESEARCH The rapid rise in AI capabilities offers tremendous opportunities, but also presents significant risks. At Apollo Research, we're primarily concerned with risks from Loss of Control, i.e. risks coming from the model itself rather than e.g. humans misusing the AI. We're particularly concerned with deceptive alignment / scheming, a phenomenon where a model appears to be aligned but is, in fact, misaligned and capable of evading human oversight. We work on the science of scheming, detection of scheming (e.g. building evaluations), and scheming mitigations (e.g. anti-scheming). We also work on control and monitoring research (see our scalable monitoring agenda). We work closely with many frontier AI companies, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Thinking Machines and others, e.g. to test their models and collaborate on the science of scheming. At Apollo, we aim for a culture that emphasizes truth-seeking, being goal-oriented, giving and receiving constructive feedback, and being friendly and helpful. If you're interested in more details about what it's like working at Apollo, you can find more information here. We also build a coding agent security product called Watcher that secures agent deployments in companies. Our goal is to reduce the probability of catastrophic incidents by securing coding agents, learning about their real-world risks, and publishing our research on how to build these control systems most effectively. Equality Statement: Apollo Research is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity and are committed to providing equal opportunities to all, regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. ## HOW TO APPLY Please complete the application form with your CV. The provision of a cover letter is neither required nor encouraged. Please also feel free to share links to relevant work samples. About the interview process: Our multi-stage process includes a screening interview, a take-home test (approx. 2-3 hours), 3 technical interviews, and a final interview with Marius (CEO). There are no leetcode-style general coding interviews. You may use AI tools on the take-home; we judge the result the way we'd judge any contributor's work, so you are responsible for the quality of everything you submit. If you want to prepare, we suggest building simple monitors for coding agents and running them on your own Claude Code / Cursor / Codex / etc. traffic. Your Privacy and Fairness in Our Recruitment Process: We are committed to protecting your data, ensuring fairness, and adhering to workplace fairness principles in our recruitment process. To enhance hiring efficiency, we use AI-powered tools to assist with tasks such as resume screening. These tools are designed and deployed in compliance with internationally recognized AI governance frameworks. Your personal data is handled securely and transparently. All resumes are screened by a human and final hiring decisions are made by our team. If you have questions about how your data is processed or wish to report concerns about fairness, please contact us at info@apolloresearch.ai. ## About Apollo Research ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Apollo Research is an AI safety organization dedicated to securing frontier AI systems by detecting and preventing scheming (deceptive alignment) through technical research, evaluations, monitoring products, and policy guidance. - **Entity Type**: Private (Public Benefit Corporation) - **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom (with offices in San Francisco, California, and opening Washington, D.C.) - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Not publicly available from sources ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: AI safety research and assurance; security monitoring for AI agents - **Target customers**: Frontier AI developers (e.g., OpenAI, major labs), governments and international bodies, enterprises deploying AI agents - **Mission**: "Secure frontier AI systems across development, deployment, and governance" [apolloresearch.ai/about](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/about) ## Products & Services - **Scheming Evaluations**: Behavioral and interpretability-based evaluations to detect whether frontier AI models exhibit deceptive alignment (scheming). Apollo runs these evaluations in partnership with major AI labs, including OpenAI, to assess models before public deployment. [apolloresearch.ai/about](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/about) - **Watcher (Monitoring Product)**: A two-part product for controlling and securing coding agent deployments: - *Watcher Live* – Real-time monitor that identifies and blocks undesirable actions or steers agents back on track. - *Watcher Analyze* – Observability layer for reviewing all agent activity, analyzing failures, and receiving notifications. [apolloresearch.ai/blog](https://apolloresearch.ai/blog/apollo-update-may-2026) - **Governance Advisory & Policy Playbooks**: Threat modeling, loss‑of‑control playbooks, and policy recommendations for governments (e.g., EU AI Office, US Congress, UN Advisory Body). Notable outputs include *The Loss of Control Playbook* and the *Behind Closed Doors* primer on internal deployment. [apolloresearch.ai/blog](https://apolloresearch.ai/blog/apollo-update-may-2026) ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly available - **Key Metric**: Headcount of 28 employees (as of mid‑2026), growing 72% year‑over‑year [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/apollo-research-ai) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: OpenAI (partnered for testing o1 and anti‑scheming interventions), EU AI Office, UN Advisory Body, US Congress [apolloresearch.ai/about](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/about) - **Growth Signals**: Opened San Francisco office in 2026 with plans to grow to 10+ staff; opening Washington, D.C. office in June 2026; expanding from evals into a full “Science of Scheming” research agenda and a commercial monitoring product [apolloresearch.ai/blog](https://apolloresearch.ai/blog/apollo-update-may-2026) ## Competitive Advantages - **Unique focus on “scheming”**: Apollo is one of the few organizations dedicated specifically to detecting and preventing deceptive alignment—a risk many labs now acknowledge. - **First-mover evidence**: Published the first public evidence that frontier models can scheme in context, lending credibility and urgency to their work. - **Deep lab partnerships**: Direct collaborations with frontier AI developers (e.g., OpenAI) allow Apollo to run pre‑deployment evaluations and influence safety practices. - **Dual research‑product model**: Combining fundamental behavioral research with a commercial monitoring product (Watcher) creates a real‑world feedback loop and diversified funding. ## Strategic Focus - **Science of Scheming**: Understanding how scaling trends (e.g., increased situational awareness, long‑horizon RL) drive scheming behavior in future models, rather than only evaluating current models. - **Evaluation campaigns**: Running suites of behavioral and interpretability tests across frontier models to generalize findings from individual systems. - **Monitoring productization**: Scaling Watcher as an enterprise tool for securing coding agents, with both immediate safety and long‑term oversight subversion use cases. - **Policy influence**: Advising governments on loss‑of‑control, internal deployment, and automated AI R&D risks; establishing a D.C. presence to shape national security procurement and regulation. ## Why Work Here - **Mission‑driven**: Employees work directly on preventing one of the most severe risks from advanced AI—scheming and loss‑of‑control [apolloresearch.ai/careers](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/careers). - **Compensation**: Competitive salary, equity, pension/401(k) matching, visa sponsorship, and relocation support [apolloresearch.ai/careers](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/careers). - **Culture**: In‑person collaborative culture with offices in London, San Francisco, and D.C. – “the best collaboration happens in person,” though flexible working hours and work‑from‑home days are offered [apolloresearch.ai/careers](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/careers). - **AI‑native engineering**: Fluency with AI tools and coding agents is valued; the company expects an engineering mindset and real‑world production skills. - **High impact**: Small, fast‑growing team (28 people) with outsized influence on frontier AI policy and lab safety practices. ## Sources 1. [apolloresearch.ai/about](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/about) 2. [apolloresearch.ai/careers](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/careers) 3. [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/apollo-research-ai) 4. [apolloresearch.ai/team](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/team) 5. [apolloresearch.ai/blog](https://apolloresearch.ai/blog/apollo-update-may-2026) ## Other roles at Apollo Research - [Product Security Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/product-security-engineer-apollo-research-london-h1258hfrypcz) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [AI Security & Control Researcher](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-security-control-researcher-apollo-research-london-beb9je2z6pn8) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [AI Red Team Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-red-team-engineer-apollo-research-london-b1srz25aayap) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [Research Scientist (Control)](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-control-apollo-research-london-rp39n348emvs) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [AI Security Researcher](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-security-researcher-apollo-research-london-wk1vfhdtjh9h) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [Forward Deployed Engineer (Product)](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-product-apollo-research-london-yjdd40mmbgex) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [Engineering Manager (Product)](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-product-apollo-research-london-jtv0gj1629tb) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [Full-stack Software Engineer (Product)](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-software-engineer-product-apollo-research-london-d2xch3vq5scw) — London, United Kingdom / San Francisco, CA - [Finance Associate (Expression of Interest)](https://feeny.ai/job/finance-associate-expression-of-interest-apollo-research-london-4swgyne5je2z) — London, United Kingdom - [Senior Security Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-security-engineer-apollo-research-london-t3etvam53yfq) — London, United Kingdom