Home Lab Roadmap

8-Month Build Plan

A structured sequence of AI security projects — from LLM defense and log analysis to adversarial ML and automated red teaming. Built progressively and documented openly.

3
Phases
8
Projects
8
Months
4
Focus Areas

Overall Roadmap Progress

Phase 1 · Foundations 35%
Phase 2 · Adversarial ML 5%
Phase 3 · Employer Work 0%
M1
Active
M2
P1
M3
P2
M4
P2
M5
P2
M6
P3
M7
P3
M8
Deploy
01
Phase 1 · Months 1–2

Core AI Security Foundations

Build the foundational tools that every AI security engineer needs to have shipped.

In Progress
P1

LLM Prompt Injection Defense Toolkit

A library of defensive patterns, filters, and evaluation scripts that detects and mitigates prompt injection attacks. Includes a test harness with 200+ adversarial examples and benchmark results across mitigation strategies.

LLM Security Prompt Defense Secure App Design Eval Frameworks
40% complete Details →
P2

AI-Powered Log Analyzer (LLM + Vector Search)

A tool that ingests logs, builds a semantic vector index, surfaces anomalies using embedding similarity, and uses an LLM to generate analyst-ready summaries and incident reports. No rules required.

AI Cyber Defense RAG Pipelines Threat Detection Vector Search
20% complete Details →

Phase 1 Milestones

Project repos created and structured
200-sample adversarial test harness built
Semantic filter v1 shipped with benchmarks
Log analyzer ingests real syslog format
Both projects have research note writeups
Shared as OSS with permissive license
02
Phase 2 · Months 3–5

Adversarial ML & Secure AI Engineering

Deepen technical credibility with the work that separates AI security engineers from security generalists.

Planned
P3

Adversarial Attack Playground

Interactive research environment implementing FGSM, PGD, C&W, and DeepFool in PyTorch with decision boundary visualizations and robustness benchmarking. Includes paper reproductions with annotated notebooks.

Adversarial ML Model Robustness Research Communication
P4

Secure MLOps Template

Production-ready GitHub template with model scanning CI, dependency audit, secrets management via SOPS, signed model artifacts, container hardening, and SBOM generation. Fork-ready for any ML project.

Secure Deployment MLOps Supply-Chain Security
P5

AI Threat Modeling Framework

A structured threat modeling methodology for AI systems inspired by MITRE ATLAS and STRIDE, covering 6 AI attack surfaces with worked examples, severity scoring, and countermeasure mappings.

AI Threat Modeling Systems Thinking Architecture Design

Phase 2 Milestones

All 4 major attack algorithms implemented
Secure MLOps template live on GitHub
2 paper reproductions published
AI threat model framework documented
3+ research notes published
Begin job application outreach
03
Phase 3 · Months 6–8

High-Impact, Employer-Ready Work

The most complex and end-to-end projects — each one combining multiple focus areas into a single deployable system.

Planned
P6

LLM Red Teaming Evaluation Suite

Automated framework that tests LLMs across jailbreaks, safety bypasses, toxicity, data extraction, and prompt leakage. Generates structured evaluation reports aligned with industry red-team standards (PyRIT, NIST AI RMF).

AI Red Teaming Eval Frameworks Safety Engineering
P7

AI-Powered SOC Assistant

Multi-agent LangGraph system that automates SOC Tier-1 workflows: alert triage, threat intel correlation, MITRE ATT&CK mapping, and analyst report generation. Integrates with Elastic SIEM.

Multi-Agent Systems AI Cyber Defense SOC Workflows
P8

Research Paper Reproductions (3–5 Papers)

Faithful reproductions of landmark adversarial ML papers (FGSM, PGD, UAP, Membership Inference) with annotated code, original result comparisons, and commentary on what still holds in 2026.

Research Literacy Experimentation Communication

Phase 3 Milestones

Red team suite covers all 5 attack categories
SOC assistant integrated with live SIEM demo
3+ paper reproductions published
Portfolio site live and indexed
Active in AI security community discussions
All work documented and published

Related Industry Roles

Types of roles where these technical skills — LLM security, adversarial ML, red teaming, and secure AI engineering — are directly relevant.

AI Security Engineer

Anthropic · OpenAI · Google DeepMind · Microsoft

Build and maintain security systems for AI products: prompt injection defenses, red teaming frameworks, model security reviews. Requires LLM security engineering + evaluation frameworks.

AI Red Team Lead

OpenAI · Scale AI · Cohere · Stability AI

Lead structured adversarial testing of AI models before release: jailbreak research, safety evaluation, structured reporting. Requires red teaming methodology + evaluation suite experience.

Adversarial ML Engineer

DARPA · MITRE · Academic Labs · Defense Contractors

Research and publish on adversarial ML, robustness, and formal verification. Requires deep technical knowledge of attack algorithms and evaluation methodology.

MLSecOps / Secure AI Platform Engineer

AWS · Azure AI · Google Cloud · Enterprise AI Teams

Secure the AI platform infrastructure: model supply chain, deployment pipelines, runtime monitoring. Requires MLOps + security engineering hybrid skills.