AI Security Engineer Role - $150/hr Offensive Cyber in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Market Compensation: At $150/hour, this contract rate is well above the market average for senior penetration testers (typically $60–$120/hour on contract) and even senior application security engineers (~$80–$130/hour). This premium reflects the niche intersection of offensive security and AI/ML evaluation — a space with very few experienced practitioners.
Skill Development: This role sits at a genuinely rare crossroads of two high-demand fields:
- AI Safety & Red-Teaming: Evaluating frontier AI models is an emerging discipline with explosive demand from major labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind). Early experience here is a strong career differentiator.
- Reinforcement Learning Environments: Building RL environments is a specialized ML engineering skill that opens doors in AI research and applied ML teams.
- Offensive Security Benchmarking: Creating rigorous, reproducible security benchmarks is a credentialing-worthy contribution to the security research community.
Green Flags: Terac's model of connecting vetted human experts to AI labs is well-positioned in the current AI boom. Work done here could lead to ongoing, repeat engagements with leading AI research organizations.
Red Flags: This is a contract/project role, not a full-time position, so there are no benefits, job security guarantees, or defined career ladder. Treat it as high-value consulting, not a primary career anchor.
Headquarters: United States
URL: https://terac.com
What We're Researching
We're hiring offensive cybersecurity experts for a long-term paid project focused on AI evaluation. Our goal is to build and harden reinforcement learning environments that test the limits of frontier AI models. This work directly contributes to understanding and mitigating advanced security risks in emerging technologies.
How It Works
You will work remotely on an hourly basis to design and implement complex cybersecurity benchmarks. Your tasks will involve creating robust reinforcement learning environments tailored for offensive security scenarios. You will continuously harden these environments to ensure they provide rigorous evaluations for AI systems. The project requires ongoing collaboration and iterative development to keep pace with new vulnerabilities.
Who This Is For
We welcome offensive cybersecurity engineers, penetration testers, and security researchers with strong technical backgrounds. Ideal candidates have hands-on experience building secure environments or developing security benchmarks. Familiarity with reinforcement learning or AI evaluation frameworks is highly valued but not strictly required.
What You'll Do
- Design and build offensive cybersecurity reinforcement learning environments
- Harden existing benchmarks to withstand advanced AI interactions
- Develop rigorous evaluation criteria for frontier AI models
- Collaborate on a long-term hourly basis to iterate on security scenarios
Who Should Apply
- Professional experience in offensive cybersecurity or penetration testing
- Strong background in building or hardening technical environments
- Comfortable working on long-term hourly remote projects
- Interest in AI safety and model evaluation
Compensation
$150 per hour
Ready to Participate?
About Terac
Terac is building the world's largest pool of vetted human experts for AI. Researchers, AI labs, and product teams use Terac to recruit, screen, and pay study participants across industries, languages, and skill sets.
Learn more at terac.com or on YouTube at @jointerac.
Frequently Asked Questions
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