AI Incident Response Associate Specialist

Help shape the future of AI Incident Response at PepsiCo. As a Global Cybersecurity Incident Response AI Subject Matter Expert, you’ll build readiness across a highly complex global environment, take the lead when AI cybersecurity incidents happen, and turn AI technology into practical capabilities that transform how Incident Response operates every day. 

• Act as the primary IR representative for AI security incident readiness, investigations, and response activities across PepsiCo’s AI ecosystem
• Develop and maintain holistic knowledge of AI-related infrastructure, applications, data flows, model environments, business criticality, ownership, and operational dependencies
• Support and maintain inventories of AI systems, models, agents, datasets, integrations, supporting infrastructure, owners, and critical business processes
• Establish and maintain strong working relationships with AI engineering, data science, application, platform, governance, and business teams to enable effective incident preparation and response
• Develop, maintain, and improve AI-specific IR runbooks, investigation procedures, evidence collection and analysis guidance, and escalation paths
• Lead AI security incidents and investigations end-to-end, coordinating IR activities with support from other functions like Incident Response, Digital Forensics, Malware Analysis, Application Security, Cloud Ops and AI teams
• Perform investigation activities related to AI security events, including unauthorized access, model abuse, prompt injection, data leakage, adversarial manipulation, supply chain exposure, and misuse of AI-enabled capabilities
• Coordinate containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident improvement activities for AI-related incidents, ensuring actions are risk-based, timely, and aligned with business priorities
• Partner with Security Architecture, Threat Defense and AI teams to improve AI-specific monitoring, alerting, threat hunting, and response use cases
• Drive the development and implementation of AI- and LLM-enabled incident response capabilities in partnership with CFC and S&T teams, leveraging automation and emerging technologies to scale IR operations and enhance incident handling across the entire response lifecycle
• Support the creation and maintenance of AI incident response lab environments, test cases, simulations, and safe investigation capabilities
• Support improvements to PepsiCo’s AI security posture through assessments, control and monitoring enhancements, tooling evaluations, POCs, capability development, deployments, and strategic security investments
• Participate in or organize AI-focused tabletop exercises, workshops, training sessions, and scenario-based simulations to improve organizational readiness
• Stay current with AI technologies, emerging AI threats, adversarial techniques, regulatory expectations, and industry best practices relevant to AI incident response
• Support the development of metrics, lessons learned, reports, and executive-level summaries related to AI incidents, readiness gaps, and capability improvements
• Mentor, support and train other IR team members by sharing knowledge of AI systems, investigation approaches, tools, and emerging AI threat patterns
• Participate in Incident Response off-hours escalations as required

• 5+ years of experience in cybersecurity, incident response, security operations, cloud security, application security, threat analysis, or a related technical cyber security discipline
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related discipline
• Relevant certifications in Incident Response, Digital Forensics, Cloud Security and AI security are preferred
• Practical understanding of AI/ML systems, generative AI applications, model deployment patterns, data pipelines, APIs, cloud platforms, and enterprise application architectures
• Familiarity with AI security risks such as prompt injection, model abuse, data leakage, adversarial inputs, model theft, poisoning, unauthorized access, and agentic AI misuse
• Proven experience supporting or leading cybersecurity investigations, including scoping, evidence collection, timeline analysis, containment planning, remediation tracking, and post-incident review
• Strong understanding of core security technologies such as SIEM, EDR, cloud security tooling, identity platforms, DLP, IDS/IPS, logging platforms, and case management systems
• Working knowledge of cloud and container environments, including logs and telemetry relevant to AI workloads, applications, APIs, infrastructure, and data access
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional technical teams such as engineering, infrastructure, cloud, application security, data science, governance, and business stakeholders
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to assess ambiguous situations, identify risks, and recommend practical response actions
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate complex AI and cybersecurity issues into clear findings, risks, and actions for technical and non-technical audiences ; Proficiency in English, both written and spoken
• Self-motivated, detail-oriented, and proactive, with a strong focus on continuous improvement and operational excellence
• Team-focused mindset with the ability to work effectively under pressure during high-priority or complex investigations
• Good decision-making skills, with the ability to balance technical risk, business impact, urgency, and available response options
• Strong time management and prioritization skills