Senior AI Engineer in Belfast

As a leader in cybersecurity, Rapid7 is expanding our global AI footprint and is looking for a passionate Senior AI Engineer to join Rapid7’s AI Centre of Excellence. The AI centre of excellence is on a mission to use AI to accelerate threat investigation, detection and response (D&R) capabilities of our Security Operations Centre (SOC) for both conventional networks and cloud environments. You will design and deliver solutions that address complex, unsolved challenges, working closely with development teams, data engineering, product managers and UI/UX teams along the way.

About the Team: The AI Center of Excellence team designs, prototypes and ships production AI models and systems. Our mission is to leverage the best available technology to protect our customers' attack surfaces. For example, we partner closely with Rapid7’s Detection and Response teams, including our MDR service, to leverage AI/ML for enhanced customer security and threat detection. We operate with a creative, iterative approach, building on 20+ years of threat analysis and a growing patent portfolio. The environment is collaborative, sharing knowledge and developing internal learning. If you’re passionate about AI and want to make a major impact in a fast-paced, innovative environment, this is your opportunity.

About the Role: As a Senior AI Engineer, you’ll design, implement, and optimize AI models and systems across a variety of cybersecurity use cases. You’ll balance hands-on technical work with cross-functional collaboration, helping shape project direction and mentoring less experienced engineers. You’ll operate in both R&D and production environments, using cloud-based infrastructure (AWS, Bedrock, Sagemaker) and modern AI frameworks. You’ll collaborate with peers across data, product, and platform teams to ensure the successful integration of AI into Rapid7’s product ecosystem. Specifically, your focus will be to:

• Develop and ship high-quality AI systems that deliver measurable customer value.
• Lead the technical implementation of specific AI projects, from prototyping through deployment.
• Collaborate closely with product, data science, and platform teams to design, build, and ship AI-powered features that deliver measurable customer and business value.
• Contribute to the development of best practices for model experimentation, evaluation, and observability.
• Mentor and support team members in areas like architecture, model design, and debugging.
• Maintain awareness of emerging AI methods relevant to cybersecurity and share learnings internally.

The skills and qualities you’ll bring include:

• Proven expertise in building and deploying AI systems in production using Python and modern ML frameworks.
• Hands-on experience with tools such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, or TensorFlow for model development.
• AWS Bedrock, Sagemaker, HuggingFace, or equivalent cloud AI stacks.
• CrewAI or other orchestration frameworks for agentic AI systems.
• Pandas, NumPy, Airflow, or Databricks for data engineering and workflow automation.
• Understanding of model lifecycle management, including monitoring, retraining, and versioning.
• Ability to evaluate trade-offs between model performance, latency, and interpretability.
• Familiarity with cybersecurity, or adjacent high-signal domains (e.g., finance, healthcare, marketplaces), is a strong plus.
• Thrive in a dynamic, iterative environment where experimentation drives progress.
• Demonstrate curiosity and persistence - you’re excited to explore new techniques, tools, and ideas while maintaining focus on reliability and value.
• Balance autonomy with accountability, with a strong sense of ownership for delivering AI capabilities that make measurable impact.
• Strong written & verbal communication with the ability to convey complex ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Approaches change with openness and curiosity, seeking to understand the “why” and helping teams adapt quickly and effectively.

Core Value Embodiment: Embody our core values to foster a culture of excellence that drives meaningful impact and collective success. We know that the best ideas and solutions come from multi-dimensional teams. That’s because these teams reflect a variety of backgrounds and professional experiences. If you are excited about this role and feel your experience can make an impact, please don’t be shy - apply today.

About Rapid7: At Rapid7, our vision is to create a secure digital world for our customers, our industry, and our communities. We do this by harnessing our collective expertise and passion to challenge what’s possible and drive extraordinary impact. We’re building a dynamic and collaborative workplace where new ideas are welcome. Protecting 11,000+ customers against bad actors and threats means we’re continuing to push the envelope just like we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. If you’re ready to solve some of the toughest challenges in cybersecurity, we’re ready to help you take command of your career. Join us.