Principal Software Engineer
AI summary of the role
Principal Software Engineer on the AI-SOC team at Rapid7, building the autonomous investigation platform that powers MDR.
What you’ll do
- Architect and implement core platform components across the AI-SOC stack, including data ingestion pipelines, query engines, investigation orchestration, and ML model integration layers.
- Own technical direction for the team's most complex and ambiguous problems, defining interfaces, data contracts, and system boundaries.
- Partner with ML/AI engineers to design infrastructure for training, serving, and evaluating disposition models.
- Establish engineering standards for system design, data modeling, testing, and observability; lead design reviews and mentor senior/staff engineers.
What you’ll bring
- 10+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of leading complex, high-scale system design in distributed environments.
- Deep expertise in data systems: stream processing (Kafka, Flink), distributed query engines, data modeling, storage (DynamoDB, S3, data mesh).
- Strong working knowledge of ML/AI system design: model serving, feature pipelines, embeddings, or LLM integration.
- Experience in cloud-native environments (AWS preferred) with infrastructure patterns for AI/ML workloads.
Technologies
Kafka · Flink · DynamoDB · S3 · data mesh · ML model serving · feature pipelines · embeddings · LLM · AWS
About Rapid7
Cloud-native cybersecurity platform serving 11,000+ organizations with MDR, vulnerability management, SIEM, and exposure management via the Insight/Command Platform.
Public · 2000–5000 people
Source and classification
Deployment team leadership · Evidence for this classification:
Job Description: Principal Software Engineer, AI-SOC Rapid7 is seeking a Principal Software Engineer, AI-SOC to serve as a technical anchor on the team building the autonomous investigation platform at the core of our MDR service. This is a hands-on, high-impact role for an engineer who brings deep expertise in data systems, distributed architecture, and ML/AI and who wants to apply that expertise to a domain where the stakes are real. About the Team The AI-SOC engineering team sits within Rapid7's Detection & Response organization and builds the autonomous investigation platform powering our MDR service. Operating at the intersection of managed security operations and agentic AI, the team develops capabilities that triage alerts at machine speed so analysts can focus on high-value decisions. The team spans ML/AI engineering, data engineering, and platform engineering, tackling hard
More from the job description
Job Description: Principal Software Engineer, AI-SOC Rapid7 is seeking a Principal Software Engineer, AI-SOC to serve as a technical anchor on the team building the autonomous investigation platform at the core of our MDR service. This is a hands-on, high-impact role for an engineer who brings deep expertise in data systems, distributed architecture, and ML/AI and who wants to apply that expertise to a domain where the stakes are real. About the Team The AI-SOC engineering team sits within Rapid7's Detection & Response organization and builds the autonomous investigation platform powering our MDR service. Operating at the intersection of managed security operations and agentic AI, the team develops capabilities that triage alerts at machine speed so analysts can focus on high-value decisions. The team spans ML/AI engineering, data engineering, and platform engineering, tackling hard problems in real-time data processing, investigation orchestration, and intelligent disposition. About the Role As a Principal Software Engineer, AI-SOC, your primary responsibility will be to drive the technical design and delivery of the foundational systems that make autonomous investigation possible at scale. Specifically, your focus will be to: Architect and implement core platform components across the AI-SOC stack, including data ingestion pipelines, query engines, investigation orchest [... source excerpt omitted ...] lert types and log sources. Partner with ML/AI engineers to design the infrastructure that trains, serves, and evaluates disposition models, ensuring tight feedback loops between production signals and model improvement. Establish and champion engineering standards across the team: system design patterns, data modeling conventions, testing practices, and observability requirements. Lead design reviews and provide deep technical mentorship to senior and staff engineers, raising the overall technical ceiling of the team. Identify and resolve systemic performance, reliability, and scalability bottlenecks across the distributed investigation pipeline. Collaborate with Product Mana [... source excerpt omitted ...] g-term platform health. Contribute to cross-team architectural decisions and represent AI-SOC engineering in broader platform and infrastructure forums. The skills and qualities you'll bring include: Bring 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a demonstrated track record of leading complex, high-scale system design across distributed environments. Demonstrate deep expertise in data systems, including stream processing (e.g., Kafka, Flink), distributed query engines, data modeling, and storage systems (e.g., DynamoDB, S3, data mesh patterns). Apply strong working knowledge of ML/AI system design, including model serving infrastructure, feature pipelines, embedd
Employer postings · Data from · Sources