Director of AI
Director of AI/ML Engineering
TENEX.AI · Cybersecurity / Managed Detection and Response · 20-75 employees · 📍 San Jose, CA
Ground-floor AI/ML engineering director at a well-funded, AI-native MDR cybersecurity startup, architecting and owning the full AI stack — LLMs, RAG pipelines, graph reasoning, and autonomous threat response — at billion-event scale.
AI Maturity
advanced
Reports To
CTO
Why Role Exists
New position
Company Stage
startup
Source
linkedin
Key Responsibilities
- Own technical strategy and architecture for scalable, secure AI systems powering autonomous detection, RAG investigation, and auto-remediation workflows
- Design, build, and productionize large-scale LLMs, graph-based reasoning engines, and streaming feature pipelines operating on billions of security events
- Own AI reliability lifecycle — prompt libraries, fine-tuning, red-team testing, latency budgets, and fallback strategies
- Lead and mentor multiple engineering team leads and AI engineers; drive design reviews, code quality, and security-first culture
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product and design to shape platform evolution and drive complex software delivery
Requirements
- Proven experience architecting and productionizing LLM-based systems at scale
- Hands-on expertise with RAG pipelines, graph reasoning, and streaming data infrastructure
- Track record managing multiple engineering teams or team leads
- Strong background in distributed systems and high-throughput event processing
- Ability to operate in fast-moving, early-stage startup environment
Signals
- ⚠ No salary range disclosed despite being a senior leadership role
- ⚠ Role posted at least three times across a short window — possible difficulty closing candidates or evolving scope
- ⚠ Tri-location onsite requirement (San Jose, Sarasota, Kansas City) suggests geographic fragmentation and potential friction for candidates
- ✓ Seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) — top-tier venture validation
- ✓ Series A or growth round led by Crosspoint Capital with institutional co-investors including Shield Capital and DTCP
- ✓ AI is the core product, not an add-on — genuine AI-native build mandate
- ✓ Early employee upside with limited downside framing — strong equity story
- ✓ Ground-floor opportunity with real technical scope and autonomy
- ✓ Defined technical problems (billions of events, LLMs, graph reasoning) signal mature engineering thinking, not vaporware
Company History
Role has appeared at least three times in the company's posting history within a very short window (all flagged around 2026-05-30), suggesting either active iteration on the job spec, difficulty closing the right candidate, or a recent decision to repost with updated scope — warrants direct inquiry into current team structure and hiring timeline.