Cybersecurity Engineer, Artificial Intelligence

Wintrust provides community and commercial banking, specialty finance and wealth management services through its 16 bank charters and nine non-bank businesses. Wintrust delivers the sophisticated solutions of a large bank while staying true to the relationship-focused, personalized service of our community banking roots. We serve clients in all 50 states with more than 200 branch banking locations in Illinois, southwestern Florida, northwestern Indiana, west Michigan and southern Wisconsin and commercial banking offices in Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Mich., and in key branch banking locations throughout Illinois. Our people are the heart of our business and we are proud to rank consistently as a top place to work. Wintrust is a $66 billion financial institution based in Rosemont, Illinois, and listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “WTFC.”

Why join us?

• An award-winning culture! We are rated a Top Workplace by the Chicago Tribune (past 12 years) and Employee Recommended award by the Globe & Mail (past 6 years)

• Competitive pay and discretionary or incentive bonus eligible

• Comprehensive benefit package including medical, dental, vision, life, a 401k plan with a generous company match and tuition reimbursement to name a few

• Promote from within culture

Why join this team?

• This position has the opportunity to interface with and have a positive impact on multiple areas of Wintrust's business

• We hold ourselves accountable to high standards, share wins, operate ethically, and have fun

Position Overview

The AI Cybersecurity Engineer will support technical security engineering for Wintrust’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence Alliance (RAIA). This is a hands-on role focused on building robust defense-in-depth for AI systems, specializing in the secure integration of LLM frameworks and the mitigation of adversarial machine learning risks. You will collaborate across multi-disciplined teams to engineer automated security controls, perform red teaming on model deployments, and ensure that AI innovations remain resilient against evolving threat vectors.

What You’ll Do

• Lead security assessments within the RAIA for Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Models (NLMs), Small Language Models (SLMs), or other projects under the scope of Artificial Intelligence

• Participate in RAIA to review use cases based on value, complexity, feasibility, risks, compliance, and alignment with strategic goals

• Review AI architectural designs and usage within third-party products for compliance with security best practices, AI security frameworks, and regulatory requirements

• Participate in the RAIA to build and maintain standards and frameworks for Wintrust to use to review use cases and help the business develop use cases

• Analyze AI-specific security risks, including algorithmic bias, sensitive data exposure, PII leakage, and model poisoning (adversarial attacks), ensuring models remain resilient against manipulation

• Demonstrate agility by managing shifting security priorities and “other duties” as AI integration evolves, ensuring Wintrust’s defense posture remains aligned with organizational needs

• Experience building and fine-tuning LLMs using frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow, with a focus on writing clean, scalable code for data preprocessing, embedding generation, and API integration while maintaining secure coding practices to prevent injection vulnerabilities

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, or AI preferred or equivalent experience

• 3-5 years of experience in the full Software Development Lifecycle

• Specific or relative experience in conducting security reviews of AI-driven applications to identify vulnerabilities in code, model logic, and data integration is a plus, but not necessary

• Understanding of machine learning architecture, including the ability to evaluate the security of training pipelines, inference engines, and API-driven workflows from a software engineering perspective

• Cybersecurity and/or Artificial Intelligence related certifications preferred

Benefits

Medical Insurance • Dental • Vision • Life insurance • Accidental death and dismemberment • Short-term and long-term Disability Insurance • Parental Leave • Employee Assistance Program (EAP) • Traditional and Roth 401(k) with company match • Flexible Spending Account (FSA) • Employee Stock Purchase Plan at 5% discount • Critical Illness Insurance • Accident Insurance • Transportation and Commuting Benefits • Banking Benefits • Pet Insurance

Compensation

The estimated salary range for this role is $120,000 - $167,000.00, along with eligibility to earn an annual bonus. Actual salaries may vary based on several factors, such as a candidate’s qualifications, skills and experience.

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From our first day in business, Wintrust has been proud to serve a variety of unique communities and people from all walks of life.  To build a company that reflects the communities we serve, we believe that fostering a unique and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and empowered to succeed will support our ongoing success.  Wintrust Financial Corporation, including community banking and financial services subsidiaries, is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, and other legally protected categories.