KLA is a global leader in diversified electronics for the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. Virtually every electronic device in the world is produced using our technologies. No laptop, smartphone, wearable device, voice-controlled gadget, flexible screen, VR device or smart car would have made it into your hands without us. KLA invents systems and solutions for the manufacturing of wafers and reticles, integrated circuits, packaging, printed circuit boards and flat panel displays. The innovative ideas and devices that are advancing humanity all begin with inspiration, research and development. KLA focuses more than average on innovation and we invest 15% of sales back into R&D. Our expert teams of physicists, engineers, data scientists and problem-solvers work together with the world's leading technology providers to accelerate the delivery of tomorrow's electronic devices. Life here is exciting and our teams thrive on tackling really hard problems. There is never a dull moment with us.
The KLA Services team headquartered in Milpitas, CA is our service organization that consists of Service Sales and Marketing, Spares Supply Chain management, Field Operations, Engineering, Product Training, and Technical Support. The KLA Services organization partners with our field teams and customers in all business sectors to maintain the high performance and productivity of our products through a flexible portfolio of services. Our comprehensive services include: proactive management of tools to identify and improve performance expertise in optics, image processing and motion control with worldwide service engineers, 24/7 technical support teams and knowledge management systems and an extensive parts network to ensure worldwide availability of parts.
Job Description/Preferred Qualifications
We are seeking a highly skilled, passionate Senior AI Production & Security Engineer to join our Service AI Engineering team. This role will be pivotal in owning production application support for enterprise AI applications and in leading security engineering efforts to protect intellectual property (IP). We encourage you to apply if you're a deeply technical engineer with strong security instincts, operational excellence, and clear leadership potential.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead an AI security testing and adversarial assessment program (e.g., prompt injection, jailbreaks, data exfiltration, tool/plugin abuse), including repeatable test plans, automation, and regression gates.
- Own production application support for enterprise AI applications: incident triage, root-cause analysis, remediation, and post-incident improvements with measurable reliability outcomes
- Build and operate observability and monitoring to understand and detect suspicious or unsafe user interaction patterns (abuse detection, anomaly signals, alerting), aligned with privacy and compliance needs.
- Design and implement IP protection and safety guardrails (sensitive data detection/redaction, policy enforcement, access-control verification, safe tool-use constraints, audit trails).
- Drive secure-by-design architecture via threat modeling for AI application changes (model, retrieval/data access, tools/agents) and ensure mitigations are implemented before release.
- Establish and enforce DevSecOps practices for AI applications (CI/CD security gates, dependency hygiene, secrets management, least privilege, vulnerability management, secure rollout/rollback).
- Provide senior technical leadership: mentor engineers, lead design reviews, partner with corporate security and engineering stakeholders, and set standards that raise security and production quality.
Qualifications:
- Proven experience leading security initiatives (threat modeling, vulnerability management, incident response, secure architecture reviews) and driving cross-team remediation
- Hands-on experience securing cloud-native applications (containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, secrets management, IAM/RBAC, logging/monitoring)
- Familiarity with AI/LLM security risks and mitigations (prompt injection/jailbreaks, data exfiltration, unsafe tool use, evaluation gates)
- Strong programming and troubleshooting skills (Python preferred) and ability to build automation for testing, monitoring, and response workflows
- Excellent communication and leadership potential-able to lead technical programs, influence stakeholders, and mentor others
- Prior experience in a similar industry and/or protecting proprietary IP in high-assurance environments is a plus
Minimum Qualifications
Master's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, or related field. 10+ years of experience in security engineering, production engineering, DevSecOps, or closely related roles, including ownership of production systems.
Be aware of potentially fraudulent job postings or suspicious recruiting activity by persons that are currently posing as KLA employees. KLA never asks for any financial compensation to be considered for an interview, to become an employee, or for equipment. Further, KLA does not work with any recruiters or third parties who charge such fees either directly or on behalf of KLA. Please ensure that you have searched for legitimate job postings. KLA follows a recruiting process that involves multiple interviews in person or on video conferencing with our hiring managers. If you are concerned that a communication, an interview, an offer of employment, or that an employee is not legitimate, please send an email to to confirm the person you are communicating with is an employee. We take your privacy very seriously and confidentially handle your information.
