Senior Manager - AI Engineering

Our Engineering organisation is scaling its AI Engineering capabilities under new leadership, creating an opportunity to build the next generation of AI at Rapid7. We are looking for an experienced Senior Manager to lead the team responsible for shaping our AI strategy and the technical direction of our LLM and agentic AI systems. You will set priorities and direction for your team, build and develop a high-performing AI engineering capability, and create an environment where technical innovation can thrive. With a strong customer-first and commercially minded approach, you'll partner across Engineering and Product to identify opportunities, solve meaningful customer problems and make smart decisions about where we invest in AI. Through your leadership, you'll help shape our product and platform investments and influence how we build and scale AI across the organisation.
About the Team
AI is reshaping cybersecurity on both sides. Attackers can use AI to strike at machine speed, and only AI-powered defense can keep up. At the same time, organizations can only adopt AI with confidence if it is secure. Rapid7 sits at the intersection of security and AI, and we are building industry-defining products for this new era.
Rapid7's AI Engineering team builds the AI that powers our security platform. We are AI engineers and applied scientists who take models from research to production, combining open-source and frontier LLMs, AI agents, and fast predictive models with more than 20 years of Rapid7 security expertise. Our work drives core use cases across Detection and Response, such as alert triage, threat investigation, and automated response, and Exposure and Remediation, such as vulnerability prioritization, attack surface risk assessment, and guided remediation. Together, these help customers stop threats faster and fix what matters most.
About the Role
As a Senior Manager, AI Engineering, you will lead a team of AI Engineers responsible for building and scaling the next generation of AI capabilities at Rapid7. You will help shape the technical direction and strategy for our LLM and agentic AI systems, working closely with Engineering and Product leadership to identify where AI can deliver the greatest customer and business value.
You will set priorities and direction for your teams, create the conditions for technical innovation, and develop a high-performing engineering organisation through coaching, mentorship and clear expectations. You will also partner across Engineering to understand AI opportunities and challenges, balancing technical ambition with customer value, scalability and the cost of building and running AI systems. Specifically, your focus will be to:

• Lead and develop a team of AI Engineers, including managers and individual contributors, providing clear direction, coaching, mentorship and support to help them deliver high-impact outcomes
• Set priorities and technical direction for the team, translating the broader AI strategy into a clear roadmap and ensuring the team is focused on the highest-value opportunities
• Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to identify opportunities for LLM and agentic AI across Rapid7's products and platforms, balancing customer value, technical feasibility and cost
• Lead the team in building and scaling production-grade AI capabilities, ensuring appropriate standards for quality, evaluation, reliability, security and operational readiness
• Work closely with other Engineering leaders to understand their AI needs, identify opportunities for shared capabilities and ensure a consistent approach to AI across the organisation
• Guide technical decision-making and trade-offs across AI initiatives, bringing sufficient technical depth to challenge assumptions, ask the right questions and ensure the team is solving the right problems
• Drive new ideas from concept through to delivery, creating an environment where engineers can prototype, experiment and turn promising opportunities into production solutions
• Keep a strong focus on customer outcomes, ensuring AI capabilities solve meaningful customer problems and deliver measurable value rather than simply adopting AI for its own sake
• Balance multiple strategic and technical objectives, making clear prioritisation decisions and ensuring the team can execute effectively in a fast-moving environment
• Represent the AI Engineering team with senior Engineering and Product leadership, communicating progress, risks, opportunities and investment needs clearly

The skills and qualities you'll bring include:

• 12+ years of software or ML engineering experience with 5+ years leading high-performing software, ML or AI engineering teams, with a strong track record of developing engineers and creating an environment where teams can do their best work
• Experience leading teams working with AI/ML, including LLMs and/or agentic AI, with a strong understanding of the opportunities, limitations and practical considerations of applying these technologies in production
• Bachelor's, Master's or equivalent degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience
• Strong technical credibility, with the ability to engage in technical discussions, challenge assumptions, evaluate architectural approaches and guide engineering decisions without needing to be the deepest technical expert in every area
• Ability to translate AI strategy into clear technical priorities and roadmaps, making informed trade-offs across technical feasibility, customer value, quality, scalability, speed and cost
• Experience building and scaling production-grade AI solutions, with an understanding of the engineering considerations required to make AI systems reliable, measurable, secure and operationally effective
• Strong commercial acumen, with the ability to evaluate the value, cost and trade-offs of AI investments and identify where AI can deliver meaningful customer and business outcomes
• Customer-first mindset, connecting technical strategy and engineering decisions to real customer problems and ensuring AI is used to solve meaningful problems rather than for AI's sake
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with experience partnering across Engineering, Product and other functions to align priorities, solve complex problems and deliver shared outcomes
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts, trade-offs, risks and opportunities clearly to engineers, Product leaders and senior stakeholders
• Strong sense of accountability, taking ownership for team and technical outcomes, proactively managing risks and removing barriers to delivery
• Comfortable operating across multiple high-impact initiatives in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment, balancing near-term delivery with longer-term technical and organisational priorities
• Experience working with greenfield technology, new platforms or emerging technologies, with the ability to turn early-stage ideas and opportunities into clear direction and ultimately production outcomes
• 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.
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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 11,500+ 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.