Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Machine Learning

University of Oxford; Oxford; On-site; GBP 39,000 - 48,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Athena Swan Bronze award

Job summary

University of Oxford's Torr Vision Group in the Department of Engineering Science invites applications for a full-time Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Machine Learning and AI safety. The role centers on safety, control, and capabilities of autonomous AI systems that interact with tools, APIs, and environments.

The candidate will contribute to agentic safety, robustness, and system evaluation, with a background in machine learning or security and experience with LLMs or agent-based models.

Qualifications

• PhD or near completion in Computer Science, AI, Security or related field.
• Strong background in machine learning and/or computer security; experience with LLMs or agent-based systems.
• Experience with safety, security or robustness of AI systems is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Investigate safety, security, control and capabilities of advanced AI systems.
• Study and develop agentic safety, adversarial robustness, and AI control approaches.

Skills

Machine Learning

Agent-based systems

Security

LLMs

Education

PhD in Computer Science / AI / Security or related field

Job description

Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Machine Learning

central Oxford

We are seeking a full-time Postdoctoral Research Assistant to join Torr Vision Group at the Department of Engineering Science, central Oxford. The post is funded by Coefficient Giving and is fixed-term to the 30th June 2027.

We are seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to investigate the safety, security, control, and capabilities of advanced AI systems, with a particular focus on increasingly autonomous and agentic models. The research will examine frontier AI systems that interact with operating systems, APIs, software tools, other agents, and complex environments, moving beyond text generation towards systems capable of planning, pursuing objectives, and executing long-horizon tasks.

A central focus will be agentic safety, adversarial robustness, and AI control. This includes agent hijacking, prompt injection, adversarial manipulation, unsafe tool use, oversight evasion, and transferable attacks that generalise across agents, models, tasks, and environments. We are particularly interested in building agentic systems that can autonomously discover, test, and evaluate general attack strategies against other AI agents, helping identify systematic vulnerabilities rather than attacks specific to a single model or setting.

Candidates should possess a PhD (or be near completion) in Computer Science, AI, Security, or a related field. You will have a strong background in machine learning and/or computer security and experience working with LLMs or agent-based systems.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to [e-mail].

For more information about working at the Department, see www.eng.ox.ac.uk/about/work-with-us/.

The Department holds an Athena Swan Bronze award, highlighting its commitment to promoting women in Science, Engineering and Technology.

Contact Person: Adel Bibi

Contact Phone:

Closing Date & Time: 09-Oct-2026 12:00

Pay Scale: RESEARCH GRADE 7

Contact Email: [e-mail]

Salary (£): £39,424 to £47,779 per annum