Associate Specialist, AI & SaaS Product Security

Job Description The Opportunity

• Based in Hyderabad, join a global healthcare biopharma company and be part of a 130-year legacy of success backed by ethical integrity, forward momentum, and an inspiring mission to achieve new milestones in global healthcare.
• Be part of an organisation driven by digital technology and data-backed approaches that support a diversified portfolio of prescription medicines, vaccines, and animal health products.
• Drive innovation and execution excellence. Join a team that is passionate about using data, analytics, and insights to drive decision-making and create custom software, allowing us to tackle some of the world’s greatest health threats.

Our Technology Centers focus on creating a space where teams can come together to deliver business solutions that save and improve lives. An integral part of our company’s IT operating model, Tech Centers are globally distributed locations where each IT division has employees to enable our digital transformation journey and drive business outcomes. These locations, in addition to the other sites, are essential to supporting our business and strategy.

A focused group of leaders in each Tech Center helps ensure we can manage and improve each location, from investing in the growth, success, and well-being of our people to making sure colleagues from each IT division feel a sense of belonging, to managing critical emergencies. Together, we must leverage the strength of our team to collaborate globally to optimize connections and share best practices across the Tech Centers.

Role Overview

This is an excellent entry point for a security professional looking to grow into seasoned security specialist. Our team main focus is AI and SaaS security in a global pharma company. As an Associate Specialist on the Strategic Platforms Security & AI Security team, you will support security assessments and deployment of security controls for SaaS systems, contribute to AI security initiatives, and develop hands-on expertise across a range of modern security tooling and platforms. You’ll be mentored and work with experienced security engineers and work across cross-functional teams, gaining exposure to both technical security practice and enterprise risk management.

What should you have

• Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or any Technology stream.
• 1+ years of experience in cybersecurity, IT, or a related field (internships and academic projects count)
• A foundational understanding of application or cloud security concepts
• Willingness to learn fast and work through ambiguity - You’re curious by default
• Genuine curiosity about AI and generative AI security is a plus
• Knowing what RAG, MCP or OWASP Top 10 for LLMs is a benefit
• Exposure to cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP), even at a basic level is a great benefit
• Some scripting or automation experience is nice to have
• You communicate clearly and ask good questions rather than making assumptions.

What will you do in this role

• Evaluate the security posture of enterprise SaaS platforms. Reviewing configurations, identifying misconfigurations, and helping design mitigations
• Contribute to building and documenting security patterns for SaaS and AI systems that other teams can adopt
• Contribute to security evaluations of AI-based systems, applications, and agents learning to identify risks specific to LLM-powered and generative AI systems.
• Support the implementation of AI security controls such as guardrails, content filtering, and policy enforcement and ensure these controls feed into downstream integrations including SIEM/SOC pipelines and CI/CD security gates for continuous inspection
• Move beyond point-in-time monitoring toward a continuous inspect-and-adapt model helping maintain integrations with downstream systems (SOC tooling, security pipelines, alerting) so that control signals flow automatically and response loops close faster.

Who we are

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been medicines and vaccines for many of the world’s most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for

Imagine getting …