Security Engineer, ML Infrastructure

$200K - $300K San Francisco, CA, US Mid Level AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

KubernetesPython

About This Role

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Why work at Higgsfield AI?

Higgsfield AI is the fastest-scaling generative AI company in history, hitting $1B in annual revenue run rate, 30M+ users worldwide, 6M+ generations per day, and powering 390 of Fortune 500 brands.

We're building at the absolute frontier of AI-powered video creation and next-generation creative tools. Joining Higgsfield means becoming part of a high-impact team shaping the future of AI-native experiences, at a company that isn't just moving fast, but rewriting what fast looks like.

About the role:

Higgsfield AI is looking for a highly technical, hands-on ML Security Engineer to join Higgsfield Security and own security across our GPU clusters and AI/ML infrastructure, from model training to inference and production deployment.

In this role, you will work as part of the Security team and closely with our ML and Infrastructure teams to design, implement, and operate security controls that protect models, data, and underlying infrastructure. Your core responsibilities will include securing GPU compute environments, assessing infrastructure and AI/ML vendors, and enforcing security requirements through technical controls, deployment policies, and verified remediation.

We're looking for someone who combines deep security engineering expertise with a practical, solutions-oriented mindset. The ideal candidate is comfortable working across cloud environments, Kubernetes, Linux, and GPU infrastructure, and understands how to balance security, performance, and reliability in a fast-moving AI environment.

This role carries direct ownership of GPU infrastructure security and the security requirements that third-party providers must meet to support Higgsfield’s workloads and data.

What you'll do:

AI/ML & GPU Infrastructure Security

  • Own the security of GPU clusters supporting distributed training and production inference across cloud and rented datacenter environments.
  • Harden GPU hosts, operating systems, drivers, container runtimes, Kubernetes clusters, and workload scheduling configurations; reduce privileged access and unnecessary exposure.
  • Secure distributed training environments and GPU workloads through isolation, access controls, and data movement restrictions. Validate isolation between tenants and workloads across compute, networking, and storage, including shared GPU environments where applicable.
  • Design and implement controls to protect sensitive datasets, model checkpoints, weights, and customer data.
  • Strengthen inference security through tenant isolation, service authorization, secure model loading.
  • Partner with ML and Platform Engineering teams to integrate security into infrastructure design and development workflows.

Vendor Security Assessment & Enforcement

  • Lead technical security assessments of GPU infrastructure providers, datacenter operators, and other AI security vendors that process Higgsfield data and support AI workloads.
  • Evaluate vendor architecture and evidence covering tenant isolation, privileged access, data handling and retention, use of customer data for model training, encryption, vulnerability management, and incident response.
  • Translate security requirements into enforceable technical controls, including approved configurations, and continuous checks for configuration drift.
  • Track internal and vendor security findings to closure with accountable owners and deadlines, validate remediation, and escalate unmet requirements. Document any approved exceptions with compensating controls and expiration dates.

Cloud & Platform Security

  • Design, implement, and maintain security controls across Linux, Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, networks, and third party datacenter environments.
  • Secure infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and access to third-party infrastructure providers. Restrict and audit vendor and administrator access to cluster management interfaces and production systems.
  • Implement least-privilege access, workload identity, secrets management, encryption, and auditable access controls.
  • Identify and remediate vulnerabilities and configuration risks across production systems, including GPU hosts, drivers, and container runtimes, coordinating changes with infrastructure owners to maintain service reliability.

Security Operations & Risk Management

  • Develop and maintain detection and response capabilities for infrastructure and AI-specific security threats, including unauthorized GPU workloads, privilege escalation, and suspicious data transfers.
  • Investigate and respond to potential credential compromise, unauthorized data access, model theft, and compromised workloads.
  • Partner cross-functionally to implement practical security improvements that account for the performance, scalability, and reliability requirements of GPU workloads.

Requirements:

  • Strong hands-on experience in Security Engineering, Infrastructure Security, Platform Security, or a related technical discipline.
  • Deep understanding of Linux, Kubernetes, networking, and cloud infrastructure security.
  • Practical experience securing or operating GPU clusters or distributed AI/ML infrastructure, with an understanding of training and inference workloads, GPU drivers and runtimes, and workload isolation.
  • Experience designing and implementing security controls across complex, distributed production environments.
  • Strong knowledge of identity and access management, workload isolation, encryption, secrets management, and least-privilege principles.
  • Experience conducting technical vendor security assessments, evaluating supporting evidence, and driving remediation with external providers.
  • Ability to identify, investigate, and remediate security vulnerabilities and infrastructure threats.
  • Proficiency in scripting or programming languages such as Python, Go, or Bash.
  • Experience partnering with Infrastructure, Platform, or ML Engineering teams to implement security solutions.
  • Strong technical ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to prioritize security risks in a fast-paced environment.
  • A hands-on, collaborative approach with the ability to independently drive security initiatives from design through deployment, verify that controls work in production, and hold internal teams and vendors accountable for agreed security requirements.

Compensation & Benefits

  • We offer a competitive and thoughtfully structured compensation package designed to align with impact, experience, and long-term growth.
  • Base Salary: The anticipated salary range for this role is $200,000 - $300,000, depending on experience, skills, scope, and location.
  • Bonus: This role is Bonus eligible and may participate in the Company's discretionary annual bonus program.
  • Equity: In addition to cash compensation, employees are eligible to participate in the company’s stock option program and share in Higgsfield’s long-term growth.
  • Benefits: We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support employees professionally and personally, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a competitive 401(k) retirement plan with company matching, and additional benefits and perks.
  • The opportunity to work on ambitious AI products alongside a highly experienced, fast-moving, and international team.
  • Significant ownership, direct impact, and opportunities for professional growth as the company scales.

This is a hybrid role based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Team members are expected to work from our San Francisco office three full days per week, with the remaining days worked remotely and are expected to be available during agreed working hours and to maintain sufficient overlap with the relevant team’s time zone. We value in-person collaboration, active communication, responsiveness, and close partnership across teams.

Higgsfield AI is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

Compensation Range: $200K - $300K

Salary Context

This $200K-$300K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 2239 roles with salary data).

View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company Higgsfield
Title Security Engineer, ML Infrastructure
Location San Francisco, CA, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Mid Level
Salary $200K - $300K
Remote No

About This Role

AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.

Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.

Across the 11,520 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At Higgsfield, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.

Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.

What the Work Looks Like

A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.

Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.

Skills Required

Kubernetes (5% of roles) Python (20% of roles)

Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.

Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.

Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.

Compensation Benchmarks

AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $212,040 based on 13,780 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200. This role's midpoint ($250K) sits 18% above the category median. Disclosed range: $200K to $300K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($266,050) and AI Engineering Manager ($253,461). By seniority level: Entry: $112,320; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,830.

Higgsfield AI Hiring

Higgsfield has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in San Francisco, CA, US. Compensation range: $300K - $300K.

Location Context

AI roles in San Francisco pay a median of $260,550 across 2,766 tracked positions. That's 22% above the national median.

Career Path

Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.

From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.

The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.

What to Expect in Interviews

Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.

When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.

AI Hiring Overview

The AI job market has 11,520 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 140 entry-level, 5,630 mid-level, 4,176 senior, and 1,574 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (708 positions). The remaining 10,737 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($266,050 median, 70 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($253,461 median, 58 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 476 roles).

Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.

The AI Job Market Today

The AI job market spans 11,520 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (8,769), AI Software Engineer (586), AI Product Manager (511). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.

The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (140) are outnumbered by mid-level (5,630) and senior (4,176) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,574 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (708 positions), with 10,737 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.

AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,480. Top-quartile roles start at $264,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.

Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $266,050 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.

The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (2,267 postings), Aws (1,178 postings), Azure (972 postings), Rag (924 postings), Gcp (715 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (572 postings), Kubernetes (559 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Based on 13,780 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $212,040. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
About 6% of the 11,520 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
Higgsfield is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from AI/ML Engineer positions include ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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